[X] My Assistant

[dilo]

This mosaic of 4 Panoramic frames from Sol442 show a strong increase in density of rocks, even big ones! Don't know if could be an issue for further movements toward the hill top?

[djellison]

Surely a base or two won't contaminate an entire planet?

You can detect the radiation from Chernobyl in plants the world over. Ditto certain volcanic events etc. Simply to maintain the validity in studying martian life - we have to be very very carefull with it. If life is there, then like our own it is probably a delicate thing that we need to be sensitive towards. How will history judge us if we render all species, if any, on the first planet we visit outside our own, extinct?

Doug

[Tman]

So why not  set aside 99% of Mars for robotic-only exploration but build a few bases in one small section of Mars?  Surely a base or two won't contaminate an entire planet?  Especially if they are very careful not to contaminate. 

An aside, I HATE the word "contaminate" when refering to bring life to other worlds.
I can see the point when there is a question if there is life somewhere or not and the need to study some alien microbes without any earth bugs getting in the mix etc etc, but I think it is ultimately humanity's responsiblility and calling to spread life throughout the Solar System and Galaxy.  Not just microbes but advanced life. 
What greater purpose could our existence serve?

What purpose could our existence serve?

The first step for a responsibility to spread life is to serve life on Earth - the reacher the biodiversity the better. We need still our only source for a long long time. We must also pool together our resources more intelligent as today for that.

My guess is that we cannot go away seriously until we have managed our home right In order to go away we need a lot of resources. And this resources are only be available on an Earth that is full calmness, love and excessive power...

[paxdan]

Surely a base or two won't contaminate an entire planet?  Especially if they are very careful not to contaminate.

Interesting article from NewScientist regarding the biological component of the aerosols in the earths atmosphere.

From the Article:
Air samples collected by Jaenicke from over Germany, Siberia, the Amazon rainforest, Greenland and remote oceans found that tiny particles of organic detritus, much of it in the form of biological cells, make up about 25% of the atmospheric aerosol [...] That is twenty times previous estimates and similar in scale to mineral dust.

The article goes on to say that "around a billion tonnes of bio-aerosols enter the [earths] atmosphere every year". While I realise any manned landing on mars is not going to generate this kind of quantity and that the strongly reactive atmosphere/UV would break down organic molecule i think this indiactes two things:

First if there is life on mars, searching for bio-aerosols is a good place to start. Sample reurn of the martian aerosols via a low altitutde atmosphere pass would be an excellent place to start. NASA already has experience at this kind of particulate collection strategy (Genesis and Star Dust) and experience at atmospheric passes, i.e. aerobraking Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey. A sample return of this nature would be a heck of a lot cheaper and far simpler than a surface reurn mission. Call it an engineering demonstrator of the return to earth section of a more complex (lander, collection, return to orbit, martian orbit rendevous, RTE) surface return strategy.

Second, life detection on planets orbiting other stars has definitely been given a boost by this discovery.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Buck Galaxy, April 4: "So why not set aside 99% of Mars for robotic-only exploration but build a few bases in one small section of Mars? Surely a base or two won't contaminate an entire planet? Especially if they are very careful not to contaminate."

This suggestion has been made -- astrobiologist Frieda Horneck recently proposed setting up a series of very big protected-environment "natural parks" on Mars, in which only sterilized devices would be allowed to explore -- but the risk remains that terrestrial germs would spread gradually across the entire planet throughout any water table that Mars possesses. The spread might be slow and incremental, but it would still happen. (It will happen a lot quicker on Europa, of course, if we manage to contaminate that world's unified subsurface ocean -- which is why NASA's scientific advisory group has concluded that the sterilization of Europan spacecraft is even more important than that of Martian spacecraft.)


"An aside, I HATE the word 'contaminate when referring to bring life to other worlds. I can see the point when there is a question if there is life somewhere or not and the need to study some alien microbes without any Earth bugs getting in the mix etc etc, but I think it is ultimately humanity's responsiblility and calling to spread life throughout the Solar System and Galaxy. Not just microbes but advanced life. What greater purpose could our existence serve?"

I myself have absolutely no objection to spreading Earth life to lifeless worlds -- but the whole purpose of looking for alien microbial life is to learn new and important scientific things. How can we possibly do that if we contaminate every supply of it we discover as soon as we start investigating it, which we definitely will do if we insist on putting people on the spot there rather than doing our sample-collecting with sterilizable unmanned vehicles (possibly controlled by humans in Mars orbit)?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Paxdan: "...If there is life on Mars, searching for bio-aerosols is a good place to start. Sample return of Martian aerosols via a low altitude atmospheric pass would be an excellent place to start. NASA already has experience at this kind of particulate collection strategy (Genesis and Stardust) and experience at atmospheric passes, i.e. aerobraking Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey. A sample return of this nature would be a heck of a lot cheaper and far simpler than a surface reurn mission. Call it an engineering demonstrator of the return-to-Earth section of a more complex (lander, collection, return to orbit, Martian orbit rendevous, RTE) surface return strategy."

This is exactly the design of "SCIM", which was one of the four finalists for the last Mars Scout selection. It could be very scientifically useful, but let's not overestimate its usefulness in Martian astrobiology -- which would probably be nil. First, Martian atmospheric dust and gas has been exposed for long periods to solar UV, and probably to the traces of H2O2 oxidant produced in Mars' atmosphere by that UV -- which are very likely to quickly break down any complex organics in them. Second, a SCIM-like sample collector that plows through the upper atmosphere at about 20,000 km/hour will heat any dust particles or gas molecules it scoops up in its aerogel collectors to several hundred degrees, finishing the job of not only sterilizing them but breaking down any complex organics into far simpler compounds that would probably be hopelessly uninformative scientifically. (For this reason, by the way, the sample that SCIM returns -- if it ever flies -- would not need to undergo sterilization protocols on Earth.)

[Chmee]

I think not allowing human EVA's is a bit paranoid, at least on the grounds of biotic contamination. We are talking about an extremely harsh environment (much worse than Antartica) where there is absolutely no evidence of current (or even past) life. Going all the way to Mars to remote pilot robots does not make sense; we can do that from here.

Mars is not isolated and never has been. There has been an exchange of rocks (in the form of meteorites from large asteroid impacts) between the planets since the formation of the Solar System, so if any "contamination" happened it occured long ago. This is not even counting the number of probes that have already landed on its surface.

Comparing the impact of a scientific research station to a nuclear reactor meltdown (like Chernobyl) is not a fair comparison. The small amount of possible contaminates from a manned station is not even a several orders of magnatute like that from that of a large fission reactor.

If life exists, it is probably buried very deep and will be very difficult to find, thus requiring people to be there.

Dont get me wrong, I hope we find life there on Mars. Let's just not be so afraid of possible (non-existent) threat of contamination that we never go there.

BTW wasn't this same debate carried out in Kim Stanley Robinson's books? Reds vs Greens?

[Mongo]

Considering the huge cost of a manned Mars program, would it not be safer (from the standpoint of avoiding biocontamination, as well as avoiding human risk), as well as more scientifically productive, to put that money into developing autonomous robotics?

An Asimov-level robot could spend years on the surface of Mars with no need for resupply, and no additional risk of biocontamination--plus have its senses optimised for geology, etc.

I agree that the current robots are a long way from 'I, Robot', but a few tens of billions of dollars on AI/robotics development could just make a difference in robotic capabilities--and, in my opinion, tip the scales firmly in favor of robotic exploration.

Bill

[Gray]

Robert Ballard has an interesting story about his undersea exploration which may be apropos to this conversation. The Alvin is only big enough for two people plus the pilot, and has only small porthole to view the outside. Back in the 1970's Ballard installed a CCD camera on the outside of the vessel. On one dive he was accompanied by a man who was an expert in the giant worms that lived by the deep sea vents. He let the "worm guy" look out the porthole, since that was the purpose of the dive, and Ballard operated the CCD. Part-way through the dive Ballard realized that the other guy was watching the TV screen over his shoulder. When Ballard asked him why he was looking at the TV screen and not out the porthole, the man replied, "The view is better." At that point Ballard realized that it was much more effiecient to conduct all of his undersea research using unmanned submersibles.

[tedstryk]

[quote=Buck Galaxy,Apr 4 2005, 07:36 AM][quote=BruceMoomaw,Apr 4 2005, 06:40 AM]"About EVA activity, it seems to me foolish to send humans onto Mars' surface and then use robots... Using this philosophy, in order to reduce risk, it's even better to remote-control a robot from Mars orbit!"

I agree enthusiastically with Dilo. In fact, that possibility has been repeatedly discussed, and it too was mentioned by some of the members of the Roadmap Committee. According to an Op-Ed that Donald Robertson wrote in "Space News" several years ago, it's the position toward which a rapidly growing segment of the planetary science community is also leaning. If the US insists on actually landing humans on Mars just for PR purposes even though that act will run a serious risk of biocontaminating the planet, it's likely to run into very serious opposition from the science community.

I think of this as the "Martian Catch-22": the only scientific discovery which could justify something as expensive as a manned expedition to Mars is the discovery of evidence of present or past life, but manned landings will disastrously contaminate the very thing they were sent there to study!

[/quote]

Well, yes, but if we did it now, there is a chance we would destroy our chances of ever finding if Mars had its own life. Also, it would hurt our chances of discovering whether or not Earth life was transmitted via meteorites. We would never know if it was brought naturally or artificially. And it would be a shame to find the remnants of Martian microbes that our microbes killed off before we had a chance to study them.

[wyogold]

I think you are missing an important point about driving/controling robots at mars compared to at earth. It takes a great amount of effort to send the signal from earth to mars plus you are limited to bandwidth,time,position of the planets. The delay in signal is also a huge factor. Its not like you can just pick up a joystick here on earth and drive the rover around. Its a give the command, wait half an hour and see what happens, repeat. If you are on mars you have real time control of the rovers/robots. I do think that we need eva after finding a good area with the rovers. I would do this on the premise that the amount of data processing a human can do is incompatible to a remotely controlled robot. Plus if you put somebody there that has a large knowledge base (of geology or such). They will be able to see things that will be of interest that might be missed by a remote camera on a rover. One instance of this is the presumably huge dust devil that went by spirit which was unknown until the moc photos reveled the track. A human would have seen and document that. To me the amount of work a human does in a day would take a rover several weeks if not months to complete and the human results would be vastly superior.

scott

[Bill Harris]

To have humans _on_ Mars is more than a PR stunt (athough one might argue that the current US Administration's announcement of this goal is just that); in a larger sense, this is the human destiny.

But having a spacious and well-equipped manned orbiter _at_ Mars with multiple Rovers communicating with the orbiter in real-time via geocentric relay satellites is the reasonable path to travel. Samples could be delivered to the orbiting lab facility using return-to-orbit samplers.

A living, breathing observer on Mars would be a wonderful event, but the environmental overhead of keeping the observer in that state would be tremendous at Mars' distance.

--Bill

[dvandorn]

To have humans _on_ Mars is more than a PR stunt (athough one might argue that the current US Administration's announcement of this goal is just that);  in a larger sense,  this is the human destiny.

But having a spacious and well-equipped manned orbiter _at_ Mars with multiple Rovers communicating with the orbiter in real-time via geocentric relay satellites is the reasonable path to travel.  Samples could be delivered to the orbiting lab facility using return-to-orbit samplers.

A living, breathing observer on Mars would be a wonderful event, but the environmental overhead of keeping the observer in that state would be tremendous at Mars' distance.

--Bill

Actually, no. Keeping a human crew alive and well is probably easier on the surface than in orbit. At least, it's easier assuming you'll be able to use Martian resources to support the manned crew.

For example, if there *is* a lot of ice easily available to relatively simple equipment, a crew can use Martian water for drinking, washing and food cultivation, and (through electrolysis) to provide oxygen for breathing. They can also use Martian water and elements in Martian rocks to make rocket fuel to get them back home.

Lugging all the Martian resources you want to use all the way up to Mars orbit will be more difficult and probably a good deal more expensive. Most expensive of all is bringing everything you need from Earth.

Biocontamination issues aside, a maned Mars landing is probably going to be easier and cheaper than a manned orbital mission.

-the other Doug

[Jeff7]

Actually, no.  Keeping a human crew alive and well is probably easier on the surface than in orbit.  At least, it's easier assuming you'll be able to use Martian resources to support the manned crew.

For example, if there *is* a lot of ice easily available to relatively simple equipment, a crew can use Martian water for drinking, washing and food cultivation, and (through electrolysis) to provide oxygen for breathing.  They can also use Martian water and elements in Martian rocks to make rocket fuel to get them back home.

Lugging all the Martian resources you want to use all the way up to Mars orbit will be more difficult and probably a good deal more expensive.  Most expensive of all is bringing everything you need from Earth.

Biocontamination issues aside, a maned Mars landing is probably going to be easier and cheaper than a manned orbital mission.

-the other Doug

One thing though - to convert the ice to usable water for cultivation and oxygen, you're going to need a lot of equipment. We're talking about like maybe a convoy of ships to Mars, all capable of landing and deploying in fairly short order, because the astronauts don't want to die of dehydration while trying to get their ice melters active. And power sources might be a problem - sure there's solar power, but one good dust storm could very quickly cause serious problems.
And, the best spots for ice are at the poles - not much solar power available there, on a planet already farther away from the sun than we are.

Humans are just too fragile and expensive (in terms of raw resources) to keep alive during a mission like this, at least considering the possible payoffs.

Once we figure out how to make a sustainable space station, then we might be able to put something in orbit around Mars, and control a rover from there. The problems with the ISS aren't exactly a good sign for this either - you can't keep sending new supplies to a space station millions of miles away.

Geez, I'm quite the optimist here, eh?

[Mode5]

A spacecraft in orbit with humans on board will be able to accomplish the tasks of control. They will have the ability to upload/download and store data for return to Earth. Obtaining samples would be an automated process without the need for humans. The collection of items will take longer during a mission without a human's presence. Robots can still give us what we want.

The problems with landing on Mars are immense for humans. There will always be a slight risk that they will not land properly or achieve a return orbit to Earth. A mission concentrating on the deployment/control of robots and satellites from an orbiting vessel has many advantages. It would be safer. It could give us a platform for future missions. Humans that land on Mars will need to take all biological waste back with them. They will need a clean room and a decontimation room to transit in and out of the lander. That will take a fair amount of time. We don't want to bring any uncontrolled Mars specimens back to Earth just yet.

I hope we go slow in a plodding course forward. Step by step. Keep the general public, who are not as fascinated by space wanting more and more. I don't want to see a repeat of the apathy during the Apollo missions. I believe Apollo 17 was the best mission from a scientific standpoint, unfortunately it was also the last. Apollo tells us that science alone will not keep the exploration going. Eventually we will have to land humans on Mars. I want a long term self-sustaining settlement also but that is many decades off. I hope I live to see it.

I believe an orbit-only mission would cut the R and D time considerably. Ultimately using robots will give us more science and at an earlier date than if we land humans on the surface.

[cIclops]

The difference between remote operations from Earth or Martian orbit is only significant in terms of time delay and that is only important during robot movement operations. Taking longer to move a robot from site to site, or positioning a sensor or manipulator, is almost insignificant compared with the enormous cost of sustaining people in Martian orbit. Having spent all those resources putting people into orbit, the incremental cost of landing them on surface is small compared with the benefits of having the most sophisticated "robots" in the known universe on the surface conducting exploration and scientific studies. The question is not whether to put people on the surface or in orbit, it's whether to send people to the surface.