This is why manned missions to Mars need to happen.

New Curiosity rover may be able to dig to find life on Mars.

But here's the thing, it can only go a few inches down which is much further than previous craft like Spirit or Viking but pales in comparison to other stuff.

There article mentions life could be unmolested on Mars at a depth of roughly 5 feet. FIVE. FEET. Send a team of humans there and we'd dig that depth up in about thirty minutes using shovels and then quickly scan the site before the radiation from space destroys it all. Not to mention we could explore a lot more of the Martian surface a lot faster and find things a rover might entirely miss or be incapable of analyzing or experimenting on.

Thus in conclusion, get to Space damnit! Fuck these robots and get us to space!

I agree completely.

The thing is, with the cost of one manned mission to Mars you could fund a lot of unmanned missions to it. Not having to carry the additional weights of some humans, not having to maintain livable conditions, and not having to plan a return trip drastically reduces the costs.

Even if a probe is far less flexible and adaptable than a human being, I think that for now it's better to keep sending unmanned missions.

And that's not even considering that the trip would take several years to complete. You'd have a hard time finding qualified volunteers for that. And it would take years to complete a spacecraft capable of supporting a crew to and from there alive. Human beings have never been more than 248,655 miles from Earth and it is more than 250 'million miles to Mars when the two planets are at their closest. It's way easier to sit back and say "do it" than it is for them to actually do it.

Estimates for a manned mission to Mars says it'll happen within our life time. The official plans of Russia, Europe and the USA suggests it'll happen in the 30s, but you know, the best plans of mice and men.

I'm all in favour for Mars stuff though. I'm effectively the Space Core from Portal. And for that reason I find Curiosity pretty damn impressive.

Which reminds me... I never finished my Spirit and Opportunity slash fic...

Are you kidding? I could man several missions with competent young individuals from my own university alone. They'd obviously need a lot of intense training, but when they ever do get around to this they'll be free to chose the cream of the crop.

But yeah, I'm also all for space, having grown up near the launch pads in Florida and having had family in the space program. My attitude towards it probably a bit less practical than many people's: it just seems a shame to let all that awesome stuff at Cape Canaveral go to waste.

edited 7th Jul '12 5:48:53 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

Not to mention you'd find millions of volunteers with the drive for adventure alone. Spark the equivalent of the Gold Rush or Age of Exploration in space and there will be no shortage of people to go to space, no shortage. You don't need an engineering degree to explore the Moon or Mars (hell the first people on the Moon were mainly military pilots!), you don't need a doctorate to wear a spacesuit, you don't need to achieve the rank of Air Force Colonel to fly a spaceship.

For most of these things all you need are people willing to go on a long term trip to explore where no man has gone before. Throughout history there have been many who have been able to do that, throughout the future there will be many more.

edited 7th Jul '12 5:45:40 AM by MajorTom

You also need a high level of intelligence and mental coolness (not necessarily education; but you have to be able to implement the brilliant solutions the geeks on earth think up when unexpected snags come up), and exceptional physical health (to avoid being am unexpected snag yourself).

^ That's not a problem. You can train volunteers how to operate/repair the equipment, you can get people in fine physical shape to do the tasks (hell the military does that regularly). We're not running a eugenics-like program to prevent the people of Earth save a chosen few from exploring beyond this rock.

Really all you need are the people with the guts and determination to go out there. If they ain't got that, they ain't worthy of going to space.

Sure you can get people in shape, but you still can't do anything about a lot of chronic conditions or risk factors. You want someone who is not only in shape but who also won't turn out to have allergies or a bad back or asthma or anything else that would slow them down at a mission-critical time. And like I said, education isn't necessarily a must, but without basic intelligence and the ability to think quickly and precisely an astronaut won't be able to make use of the information the experts provide him with.

Basically, if you have to choose a half-dozen or so people who are going to be entrusted with one of the most expensive pieces of equipment ever made, sent into a situation where any number of mistakes could kill them all, and where there will be absolutely no chance of rescue or assistance for a period of years, some eugenics are in order. Passenger service can wait.

Didn't Buzz lie about a health condition just so he could get into space?

Yeah, with my mental health I'll never go into space. xD

Also. New discoveries indicate a liquid ocean underneath Titan's surface.

I could squee with glee.

That's on my list of "biannual breakthroughs". Let me know when they actually send something to swim around in it.

The chances of life in it are less likely than in the subteranien oceans of Enceladus and Europa as the later two oceans would have a rocky bedrock, which would supply minerals, where as it's possible Titan's ocean would be lock between two plains of ice which would make the process more troublesome.

The same argument could have been made in the Age of Sail. Traveling at sea was isolated, limited in supplies and manpower with no real access to help. It was literally an everyone dies or everyone lives type of ordeal.

Yet millions still set sail in the Age regardless of "chronic conditions" or shape. (People went to sea missing limbs, suffering scurvy and malnutrition, put up with physical, verbal and sexual abuse and all manner of diseases and disorders, yet they put up with it and went out anyways.) The same will happen in Space. The same must happen in Space or we as a species will never get off this rock.

I'd sign up to go anywhere in space. Even if the expedition had a high probability of being a permanent endeavor e.g. colonizing/terraforming Mars with little prospect of returning to Earth.

On the other hand, pantropy may be a good idea along with terraforming.

edited 7th Jul '12 7:46:12 AM by TenTailsBeast

Really I find the current Exo-Planet hunt to be hugely exciting. In the past month two new technologies have arose.

One is allowing us to take a reading of an exo planet's atmosphere regardless of how it orbits it's star by taking in account the inferred light from Earth's atmosphere and stars is static, but the plant's moves.

And in addition to this; the ability to potentially image any exoplanet even ones Smaller Than Earth within thirty light years away with just two orbital satilites which work by looking how light from the star system refracts, a system that is FAR cheaper than the Terrestrial Planet Finder array that's been in hiatus for years.

It's interesting, that, due to the difference in gravity, a child born on Mars would never be able to visit Earth's surface. Though they'd be able to visit the Moon.

edited 7th Jul '12 8:25:40 AM by Whowho

In the age of sail, a ragtag bunch of misfits like you describe could actually build their own ship if they had to. Today, it takes the work of millions of people just to get off the ground. Until spaceships are similarly cheap only the best half dozen or so of every several million are going to be able to get a ride.

edited 7th Jul '12 8:30:08 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

Maybe when someone finds a way to launch off the planet without nearly burning down the sky. Rockets have to set some new record in mechanical inefficiency.

Honestly, I think that robotics and space exploration is a match made in heaven. Robotics allows us to explore the solar system more cheaply and with no risk for human beings; and space exploration gives us an excellent testing ground for our autonomous devices.

Yeah, even a latest-generation probe is miles away from the flexibility and adaptability of a human being; but even though I don't have precise estimate, I am pretty sure that you can send dozens of unmanned space missions to Mars for the price of just one manned mission.

Things might change in the future; but for now, it seems to me that manned space exploration has little purpose except for the bragging points.

To take the example mentioned in the original post, what is going to be cheaper and safer, to send to Mars a bunch of humans with shovels in order check if there is life on the Martian underground, or to send a robot with some sort of digging implement?

edited 8th Jul '12 11:19:05 AM by Carciofus

And that is the weakness that is killing space exploration in general. We put men on the Moon with engineer's slide rules and did it basically blind and we did that over 40 years ago.

You mean to tell me the human race has gotten so soft we cannot do that with Mars? The technology to get there has existed for 40 years, so why aren't we going? Weakness like that is why.

If not wanting to risk human beings for what amounts to bragging rights is softness, I think that we need more of this softness.

Yeah, we could send humans to Mars. It would be expensive as hell, and risky; but yes, we could. Then we would plant some pretty flags, gather some rocks, give a nice speech, and return home and have a party. I'm all for Mars rocks and for parties; but the other parts are rather unnecessary as of now, and there's no reason why we cannot send a probe to gather the rocks for a fraction of the expenses and the risks.

This is not cowardice, it is efficiency.

If 40 years ago we had had the technology we have now, I doubt that we would have sent men on the Moon. There'd have been little point, honestly, when we could have sent a rover more cheaply and explore far more of the Moon with it.

edited 8th Jul '12 11:46:18 AM by Carciofus

You forget the Soviets. When they existed, "bragging rights" had a very tangible value.

I'm sure people will go to Mars eventually, for the same reason we went to the top of the mountains and the bottom of the ocean: because it's there. Still, until our technology gets a lot better, there won't be much to be gained there. Major_Tom talks about "getting off this rock" but it appears that there aren't any better rocks anywhere remotely reachable by us, so we're just going to have to make do with the rock we've got.

Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got...

Don't hit me!

My go-to example when people mention Martian colonization is the Gobi Desert. One of the most inhospitable regions of Earth, it has little water, insane temperature extremes (-43 to 38 Celsius, that is, -45 to 100 F) and, obviously, very little plant life. Predictably, not many people live there.

Well, compared to Mars, the Gobi Desert is basically the Garden of Eden. There is little water, but nowhere as little as on Mars; the air is breathable; and the temperature extremes are survivable for a prepared human, even without the need for advanced technology. You could theoretically put a metropolis in the middle of it, with modern technology — it would be expensive and difficult, and it would be kind of an unpleasant place to live in, but it definitely would not be impossible.

So if people are unwilling to relocate to the Gobi Desert for now, why should they want to go and live on Mars?

edited 8th Jul '12 12:34:20 PM by Carciofus