Comment by areoform
4 days ago
Because human beings are remarkably capable, especially the best and the brightest. There's a great paper called the "dispelling the myth of robotic efficiency." https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/53/2/2.22... // https://lasp.colorado.edu/mop/files/2019/08/RobotMyth.pdf
Yes, a robot car that drives on its own will be a better driver than most humans who text and drive, or have 400ms reaction times.
But making a machine that can beat a 110ms reaction time human with 2SD+ IQ, and the ability to override the ground controllers with human curiosity is much harder. Humans have high dexterity, are extremely capable of switching roles fast, are surprisingly efficient, and force us to return back home.
So in terms of total science return, one Apollo mission did more for lunar science and discovery than 53 years of robots on the surface and in orbit.
How does any of that matter for this mission, which will not be landing on the moon?
Because many small steps are required before every giant leap.
I would like to point out that the current misadventure in the ME has cost at least $38,035,856,006 in 32 days. And that won't receive half of the "this is a waste of money" critiques this mission will. And there are a ton of people who are against that excursion.
Most people who will come across this will react with either extreme negativity or indifference. Very few people will react positively. This thread itself is evidence of that. This is a nerdy community filled with people who are deeply positive about space exploration and excluding my comments, the straw poll was,
Only a plurality of comments were positive. 88 comments were neutral or negative.
When I see numbers like that ($38 billion) thrown around I always wonder: Where did that money go? In the best case, it stayed in the economy in the form of salaries and such. In the worst case, it goes directly into an offshore pile of mega-wealth where it won't benefit the economy and likely won't even be taxed. Is there any way to determine where on this continuum this program stands? I'm guessing the 1960s space program, while incredibly expensive, was firmly on the "money stays in the economy" side.
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> How does any of that matter for this mission
This is a fair question. The closest answer I can get is eyes and ears onboard complement sensors.
It's also rehearsing/testing/experience gathering for an eventual mission that will land people on the Moon again. Missions don't happen in isolation.
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To test the stuff that will allow to land humans on the moon
More like to test the stuff that will take them to the ship(s) that will allow humans to land on the Moon.
Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troctolite_76535 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt#NASA_career)?
Yes, and more!
Scientific papers are a pretty poor measure of productivity so here's another one. We know about the existence of He-3 thanks to samples brought back from astronauts on the moon. Astronauts setup fiddly UV telescope experiments on the moon, trying to set up a gravimeter to measure gravitational waves, digging into the soil to put explosive charges at different ranges for seismic measurement of the moon's subsurface... They were extremely productive. Most of what we know about the moon happened thanks to the 12 days spent on the lunar surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Ultraviolet_Camera/Spectro...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Surface_Gravimeter
I’ve wondered for years if this could be quantified. Three orders of magnitude totally justifies the cost, if you care about science.
You’ve got to normalize by dollars spent, though.
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ok sure but are humans a full decade of NSF budget better than robots
a bunch of robot cars broke down middle of wuhan highways today.