Comment by inaros
6 hours ago
The Apollo comparison makes no sense. The Moon is 3 days away, Mars is 9 months. Every kilogram of human requires hundreds of kilograms of life support, shielding, food, water, and return fuel. For the cost of ONE crewed mission, you could send 50 to 100 robots to different locations across the planet, operating simultaneously for decades...
The ISS comparison is even worse.... it orbits 400 km from Earth with constant resupply and emergency return in hours. That has zero in common with being trapped on Mars for 2 to 3 years with no rescue. And if a member of the crew dies, a very real probability on a first mission...the political fallout kills the program for a generation.
A robot fails? Send another one...And on the issue of humans being more capable...
Name one thing an astronaut could do on Mars that a well designed robot cant ?
- Drill cores? Perseverance already does it.
- Analyze mineral composition? Curiosity has a full chemistry lab onboard.
- Microscopy? Done remotely since 2004.
- Collect and cache samples? Done.
- Navigate unpredictable terrain autonomously? Done.
- Detect bio signatures? Instruments do it better than human senses ever could.
You can land a robot with a spectrometer, a microscope, a drill, an X-ray diffractometer, and a gas chromatograph, so literally an entire laboratory, and operate it from Earth for a decade at 1/100th the cost.
So what specific scientific task on the Martian surface, requires a human hand, that current or near future robotics and remote operation cannot accomplish?
> So what specific scientific task on the Martian surface, requires a human hand, that current or near future robotics and remote operation cannot accomplish?
We don't know, and that's the entire point, we'll we when we get there. But there is at least one thing that cannot be done by robots, and that's studying how humans are doing on Mars. In the same way that a significant fraction of the research being done on the ISS is about human biology.
And sure, a human Mars mission is going to be extremely expensive, but I think it is worth it. It not only has scientific value, if only for the biological aspect, but it also has great symbolic value. The only thing that makes me uncomfortable is the idea that we are sacks of microbes, and by getting there, there is a good chance for us to contaminate the planet, possibly killing any chance we may have at discovering Martian life.