Don't know about the lupine ghost but I certain am.

We could have had people on Mars 20 years ago, and for a lot less than a quarter of a trillion dollars. Instead we have got a couple over rovers that take all day to do what an astronaut could do in a few minutes. Not that I am complaining you understand. The rovers are wonderful machines and much better than nothing. But what they achieve is a traversty of what could have been done 20 years ago.

We have no evidence that semi autonomous robots will be able to came anywhere near matching the cost effectiveness of humans for the exploration of Mars in 20 years time. It's a statement of blindest faith without any evidence to back it up, and certainly not supported by anyone who actually works in planetary exploration I am aware of. Certainly not Steve Squyres, Mike Malin, Ken Edgett, Ross Taylor, Bill Hartmann, or Carol Stoker, to name a few.

Conversely in 20 years time we could have people on Mars covering hundreds of km in traverse, assembling hundreds of kg of samples, deploying a scores of instruments, and doing on the spot research in real time. All of Victoria crater could be knocked off in a few days. All for a lot less than a quarter of a trillion (in today's terms).

People who deny human misisons to Mars are basically denying planetary scientists the ability to to high level science. It would be like denying astronomers psace telescopes or the larger ground based instruments. Whether do so so because they don't understand the issues, don't think the humans have a place beyond earth, don't think that planetary research is that important or simply like to provoke people who do is a question beyond the scope of this thread.

Jon

Somehow I don't think the debate is between robots and humans at all. What is annoying is the way human spaceflight is currently implemented in the real world. I mean, instead of sending 3 or 4 geologists to Mars NASA has been 'training' for that mission for the last 20 years on ISS and now they are going to spend the next 20 years 'training' for it on the Moon. And all of this 'training' is swallowing such a big part of the budget that a lot of space science has to be cancelled, including the exploration of Mars (sample return for instance).

It is just that astronauts have build a terribly poor track record when it comes to the exploration of space (relative to the costs). If you compare that to what unmanned missions have achieved it might explain why many people have developed an aversion for astronauts.

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NASA having not beening training for Mars for the past 20 years. Most human Mars mission research has been paper studies. The human spaceflight has involved LEO operations, a totally different business. This is not the fault of human spaceflight, it is the consequence of a political decision not to send people beyond earth orbit.

MSR was never cancelled hecause it was never approved. The non-implimentation of missions is another reflectionof this political decision, it is not a consequence of LEO operations in itself.

On the contrary, astronauts have a staggeringly good record in space exploration, when given the chance (i.e. Apollo). They results were extremely good value for money. The decades of LEO operations since then show that they have unsurpassed abilities to operate and maintain complex space under difficult circumstances, exactly the skills needed on a Mars mission.

The adversion to astronuats you mention is not coming from the Moon and Mars science communities. It does not come from high level committees such as the US academy of sciences. It comes from people who don't appear to understand what is involved in detailed planetary science, and the relative limits and strengths of humans and robots, both of which are needed. Or from people who would rather see the money spend on their pet projects.

Jon

hi Jon,

I admit astronauts actually did some (great) exploration on Apollo, but that was more than 35 years ago. I was indeed refering to what you call LEO operations. Even so, Apollo in the mind and memory of the general public, is not remembered for its scientific results.

Well, maybe it is not the fault of human spaceflight itself that they have spend the last 30 years in LEO, but it still is a fact. Just as it is a fact that human spaceflight is now costing us a lot of science by going back to the Moon. (BTW, this is where Mark Adler talks about the cancellation of MSR: http://planetary.org/blog/article/00000703/ which is technically not a cancelation, but I fail to see the difference)

If only we would be doing what you propose, going to Mars science driven, that would be fantastic. But the contrary is actually happening. We're not going forward, we're going back to square one! Where is the next NASA flagship mission? Shouldn't we be looking at Europa or Neptune/Triton in the next decade? Instead, we're going to the most boring place in the universe where we were 35 years ago. And yes, I 'blame' that on human spaceflight.

Track record, Jon. Look at the facts, we have had 1 (one!) scientist doing exploration in space in more than 40 years of human spaceflight. (and that was 35 years ago) This is a bit of a difficult discussion because you're absolutely right about the capabilities of scientists on Mars, but the facts are they never seem to get there.

Oh man, maybe I just hate the Moon... stupid piece of dead rock.. yakk!

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Please, could the robots-vs-humans discussions continue in (and, moderator, be moved to?) topic Humans vs. robots so this topic might continue to focus on actual Mars rover news? Thanks.

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This is not the thread to chew over this well gnawed bonbe, so these will be my last comment. May I suggest to the worthy modeators it may be worth having a dedicated thread for the topic of the correct balance between humans and robots? This would stop over threads betting diverted into the side line.

Perhaps, but we are not talking about public perception at this juncture, but actual results. The scientific achievements of Apollo are well known to those who know. It's analogous to the contrast between the public memory of Scott's second Antarctic expedition as a tragedy and the memory among polar scientists and explorers as a major scientific accomplishment.

And I would npot consider the past 20 years of LEO operations as a waste of time, but a period of important consolidation. It has also generated much data of extreme scientific value. My work team uses shuttle radar data every day with multi-million dollar commerical impacts.

You are right, its not a cancellation. It was just not feasible at the present time. there are many such mission studies that are carried out from time to time. Some evolve into workable missions some do not. Are the ones that don't cancellations? Of course not. However ESA's MSR program continues, so we will still get this information on a similar timescale anyway.

There are a whole array of interesting and exciting missions in the next few years. Flagship missions to the outer planets are indeed recommended for the next decade. These are quite separate to Lunar and Mars missions.

There are a lot of people who find the Moon extremely interesting and well worth much more detailed work, the sort of work that requires human presence. They also of the opinion that the Moon has considerable long term potential for human presence in space. If you find it boring, that's your problem.

We have had one scientists on the Moon on that period. However every astronaut had the required scientific skills and training to do useful work and many of them proved by skilled observers and collectors of data. We have had a lot scientists doing valuable work in earth orbit as well.

Obviously, and it is a great pity. The Moon is a beautiful, wonderful place, full of mystery and just waiting to be explored. Our exploration to date have been the foundation of planetary science and vastly enriched many fields of science. Apollo has inspired a generation and is one of the few things we can be proud of in the 20th century. Returning to the Moon will continue this journey and provide the scientific and technological basis for goign to Mars and the asteroids. We can't get back soon enough for me.

That's my last word on this subject on this thread.

Jon

You know, that Victoria ingress possibility does look ok, but I can't help but recall another similar first contact photo (was it Endurance?) that also looked ok - due to the moderating effect of a wide lens - but when viewed from a side angle, it was horrible.

RBG

I dunno. Looking off to the right you can see that the initial down-sloping rock is not too bad, but then it abruptly gets steeper and rougher as you hit the next layer down.

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My impression is that the slopes are much gentler than Endurance. But the issue may be that most are sand covered. Opportunity experienced some nasty wheel spin on slopes she scampered up when they were rock.

I must confess I found it hard to appreciate the scale of the crater at first. But there are some great images in the unmanned spaceflightr fora, with human figures to scale, that really show the size.

Jon

APOD October 2: Victoria Crater on Mars (a Navcam color mosaic)

Better Pancam images are still coming down.

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Great. We can just follow those tracks up ahead there.

:^) RBG

About that meteorite:



The event that produced heat shield rock and its implications for the Martian atmosphere

Abstract

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Title: The event that produced heat shield rock and its implications for the Martian atmosphere
Authors: J. E. Chappelow. V. L. Sharpton

Methods developed in previous work were used to estimate ...SNIP.... Mars once had a denser atmosphere.

Read more (192kb, PDF)

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Could this be related to the "incredible surprise" promised for tomorrow's press conference?

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No, THAT is the discovery of a third MER on the surface of Mars...

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Hum,
apart from the revelations about the abundance of water in Martian history and new geological and atmospheric discoveries etc, the `incredible surprise` i suspect is that the rovers are still functioning....

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Hum,
i just noticed the geology of Cape Verde...
There appears a banded layer that lies about 4 metres deep that is overlain by what i presume is an ejecta blanket or impact shattered rock that is clearly not banded...

(the walking stick like thing at the bottom left of the picture is about the size of a, er, walking stick.)

Attached Images

Cape Verde Sol952.jpg (100.2 KB, 22 views)

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Its a MRO image of Victoria Crater....Ive seen it.