Reordering the rant: > Manned space missions beyond the Earth-moon system are Cowboy > Science. A big "whoopee" with no real benefits to science. A huge > media event with no scientific benefit not obtainable at > dramatically lower costs. There is much whoopee science here on earth and certainly in earth orbit. You don't have to go far away to find it. Within the USA, the pork-barrelling* that everyone KNOWS goes on but everyone accepts as part of the system costs far more than whoopee science. "Make work" to put money in constituents pockets costs everyone more long term. There is of course debate about what does and doesn't constitute pork barrelling. To quote http://www.wwnorton.com/college/polisci/analyzing/webbook/cases-3.html "A $180-million-a-year wool and mohair subsidy, the $31-billion NASA space station, the mass-transit system in downtown Buffalo, and the harbor tunnel connecting the city of Boston to its airport have all been accused of being "pork." Pork-barrel politics has come under close scrutiny recently as budget pressures force politicians to reexamine their budget expenditures." Did I see a space station mentioned there ? :-) > Cowboy Science is bad science policy No problem with that. Agreeing which is which is the issue. Blanket labelling can hide truths. > A robotic mission can take pictures, bring back rocks, analyze soil > samples, and make wheelprints. A manned mission can do all those > things, plus make footprints. The budget for accomplishing the same > thing is approximately two orders of magnitude higher with Humans > around. If the cost of a human mission with similar destinations is only about 100 times higher, as you state, then you can hope for some real value for money out of properly selected and funded and implemented manned missions. More later. I'll deal with one danger here >Chance of getting caught in a planet-wide dust storm, a maelstrom >that makes Hurricane Charlie look like a case of intestinal gas, is >signifigant. There are many dangers. But, while Martian dust storms are immense (can be planet wide) and can last a lonnnng time and achieve "wind" speeds of hundreds of kph, the atmospheric density is so low (about 1% of earth normal) that a suitably suited person would have no problem walking in one with no danger of being blown over. Thin "air" has got to have SOME advantages :-). Now: The following is written assuming that life the universe and everything continues as most people could reasonably expect it to. There is no certainty that the assumed rules will not be rewritten but I'll ignore that. As we get more technologically knowledgeable we also get more populous. While there will always be financial frivolity and irresponsibility (million dollar / pound / krona birthday parties etc) the tendency is for truly vast extravagances to be more closely examined. As human need grows greater the prospect of financing things like eg manned missions to Mars grows less. This is regardless of the probable benefits - the absolute sum counts. Some argue that we are already past the optimum point and that, if we don't do an eg mars mission in the next 20 years or so then we may never do one in the foreseeable future. But why should we want to. Robots do what they do well enough when they do it. And fail miserably when they don't. A robot is just a tool or a series of tools. While the abilities of individual tools are vast compared to what a human can do, the ability to integrate the tools on a large scale and give them mobility and flexibility is absolutely lacking. While you can built a robot factory that will turn out the better part of a car with almost no human intervention, and with better quality welds and better and cheaper than if humans were involved, it has no chance whatsoever of welding the muffler on the car in the carpark, unless this was part of its 100 million dollar design. Which it wouldn't be. If you can an interested, attentive 10 year old (sometimes a little hard to find) a hand cart, a video camera (sound and picture) with uplink to control and suitable survival apparatus, they would achieve more in a day or two than all the Martian landers so far built. Give the same ability to a highly skilled and trained woman and the results would be beyond comparison with anything we have or ever will achieve on Mars in the foreseeable future with unmanned craft. A Mars base will not be a 'few sleeps and we're gone" affair. The first mars team, if they get as far as leaving safely, will be on the planet for at least 6 months and possibly 1+ years - unless there is some very substantial improvement in the art of rocket science. Such an improvement is far more likely to occur if a manned Mars mission is being actively planned. One day, centuries from now, a gaggle of satellites will (actually may) hang in low solar orbit using solar energy to pump lasers beyond our present wildest dreams, in order to generate antimatter and throw it in suitable containment to places of use elsewhere in the solar system. One day a family of strip mining machines will (may) travel the lunar surface, mining Helium 3 which has been deposited there by the solar wind. A rail gun will launch this earthwards a ton(ne) or so at a time to be used in the fusion reactors that may yet fulfil the promise of "electricity so cheap it's not worth metering". One day a seriously large meteorite / comet / planetoid will (will :-) ) be on a collision course with earth and an appropriate response will (may) be implemented to divert it. One day the vast riches of the asteroid belt will (may) be mined with some of the booty being returned to earth while other is sent to lunar bases and elsewhere to assist in mankind's expansion first through the solar system and then to the stars. One day first one and then several 'space elevators' / 'beanstalks' will (may) stand on the equator and reach into space and provide access to space at a small fraction of the cost that even the very best rockets will ever be able to achieve. In the above there are several "will (may)" combinations. There is one "will (will)" - although the time scale is unknown. It recently looked as though it might be in 25 years from now, but we now know that event will not occur. But some day a seriously large "thing" will impact earth. It may not be for 10,000 years. It may be in the next few years. If we are not prepared to meet it the future of all life on earth could be fundamentally changed. Panicking over extraordinarily long odds is not called for. Worrying about the true potential odds, which are less long than some may hope, is not useful. Wasting resource that could better be used elsewhere is not desirable. But not consciously setting out on the path to being able to address this certain event is foolhardy and bad stewardship. It can reasonably be argued that our abilities are so small at present that it will make little difference whether we start on the journey 1 year, 10 years or even 100 years from now. This has some merit - BUT if in fact the chances of our getting off planet at all diminish as the world clogs itself up, then we may be wasting the only window of opportunity that we have. Rather than just dismiss this suggestion as alarmist rubbish, we need at least to have analysed it and produced a risk assessment. The claims that a manned mission produces nothing extra but footprints was, of course, intended to be provocative and not fully true (I hope ;-) ). There are of course a number of things that would be achieved by a manned Martian mission (MMM) (or WMM if you wish ;-) ). All Martian Missions (MM's) so far have had a common feature - they are one way. A MMM MUST be planned to be a two way mission. While it would not be hard to find people who would volunteer for a one way MMM this will not be an acceptable option. A 2 way MMM is beyond the ability of sensible self contained rocket systems as we know them. The solution is either to make the mission non self contained or not use sensible rocket solutions as we know them. "Non self contained" probably requires the implementation of propellant manufacturing systems which use Mars resources to generate fuel and oxidiser. Paper designs for such systems are numerous. Another version is to use a lunar base as a staging point. Using nuclear steam rockets using water from the lunar poles would provide an extremely large boost to the net figure of merit for a mission. As has been often observed - "once you are in low earth orbit you are half way to anywhere". Non sensible rocketry solutions would include nuclear engines, vastly scaled up ion drives, light sails (unlikely) and lunar nuclear steam rockets :-). Antimatter engines are the nearly ultimate solution but are unlikely to be economic or practical any century soon. A MMM is liable to produce, in addition to information on 6 months + exploration of Mars, life support systems that will keep people alive indefinitely in the inner solar system, life support systems that will do the same on a planet surface, new advances in rocketry, remote propellant fabrication capabilities and far more. The length of a MMM will probably make true recycling and near closed system operation highly desirable if not imperative. At an Oxygen consumption of 1.3 litre per minute a person will consume a ton of Oxygen in a year. By no means unachievable as "part of the baggage" but an annoyingly high and wasteful figure. Add water, food, ... and the logistics become annoying. Maximal recycling may make sense. Finding out if this is the case and where the break even point is is part of the payback from the project. A Lunar base has a similar requirement but more easily met (albeit at potentially considerable expense). There is vanishingly little doubt that the cost benefit of exploitation of space will be vast. There is also little doubt that the cost will be vast. There is no doubt that automated tools can do much, but it takes a large blind spot to not see that tools plus a human brain and mobility can give a large advantage. What is true of tools here on earth is as true in space. While a dedicated robot tool or machine station is capable of much more cost effective production of well defined objects, the ability to meet any needs or a wide range of unanticipatable needs is much better served by a human equipped with suitable tools. There is essentially NO task that is done by automated space tools now that would not benefit in some way by a human presence. In many cases the added cost would be so vast as to not make the addition worthwhile. (Consider the usefulness but crippling cost of manning eg Hubble, typical Comsats, Iridium satellites and more. All these do their specialist jobs so well that a human presence could never be justified on cost benefit grounds But where there is "unlimited worthwhileness" available, then paying for the human presence will allow a far far greater amount of the worthwhileness to be acquired. A mars mission is one such opportunity. > How did you feel after the Challenger blew up? Multiply that by > about ten for the heroic guys that went to Mars then died on the > return trip. The first major US astronaut deaths in the space program occurred with Apollo 1. None of them wanted to die. But they all knew the risks. Not long before they died one of them, Gus Grissom said - "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life." Not attempting a well design ed well implemented task because of the risk is an unacceptable affront to the human spirit. ALL who go to space know that the risks are substantially worse than for almost any other activity we indulge in. How many people would participate in some thing where there was a 1:100 chance of death? What about 1:1000. The risk in manned space flight arguably lies somewhere in that range. NASA has lost 17 people so far. As I noted above, you would get a large number of volunteers for a one way MMM. While that is most unlikely to be planned, those who accept the role of a return MMM will completely accept the possibility of death. It is a price worth paying in many worthwhile endeavours IF the person involved freely makes the decision. The role of the team is to make the trust of those at risk justified - sadly, that's something that NASA has failed to do on several occasions. > Quite literally, a manned Mars mission could suck up the entire > research budget for the US for a year and not get off the ground. If it was allowed to. It should of course be funded as well as other projects, not instead. Once the $100 billion + cost of operatuions in Iraq is finished there may be some spare funds :-). > Funds that should be spent on health, cancer, AIDS, taking our name > off that doomsday rock, or a dozen less risky robotic space missions > must be spent on a single, high profile, high risk wild ride with no > added benefits. No. There are enough other things that the nation does that could be cut back without touching 3 of the first 4 named. Taking your name off the doomsday rock will be greatly enhanced by a MMM as it seedsdevelopment of all sorts of systems that are liable to be needed when the "invader" comes. O Enough :-) RM -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist