[andyjohnson0]

> Curiosity [...] has traveled nearly 37 kilometers, drilled into and sampled 42 different rocks, and as of publication has snapped nearly 763,000 photos.

Without in any way minimising the amazing scientific and engineering achievements of the team and the rover: we need crewed space exploration because people on Mars would be able to do the above in significantly less than thirteen years. Or, to put it another way, would do much more science in the same amount of time.

[Thrymr]

> much more science in the same amount of time.

I'm not convinced by the time argument, as astronauts would have limited time on Mars dictated by orbital mechanics and return schedules, but the bigger problem is cost. You are replying to a comment about how rovers and probes are cost effective; there is no way that crewed exploration could accomplish more science than Mars rovers without orders of magnitude more cost.

[tkcashman]

A manned mission to Mars isn't even on the table yet (sorry, Elon) until we solve several huge problems, including cosmic radiation, landing heavy payloads, and a feasible alternative to chemical propulsion (most likely nuclear, but untested).

[ozim]

Manned mission to Mars is a fad.

But it is important fad just like space mining.

We as humanity have to believe we are not in zero sum game to stay decent…

Unfortunately last years are showing us how ugly it is with rare earth elements, energy etc. It is also showing what you wrote is true. No one really believes that we can affordably space mine for rare earth and no one believes in Martian colonization that would bring tangible benefits.

[RetroTechie]

For anything to become reality, the 1st step is be able to imagine it.

Also a big problem can be attacked by solving a small part of it, see what's left & repeat until remaining bits are easy.

Over time, what used to be 'impossible' becomes easy. What matters is deciding what to focus on for the foreseeable future, and spend resources wisely. See eg.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calcu...

Yeah a human mission to Mars, colonizing the clouds of Venus, asteroid mining or Dyson spheres may not be achievable now (if ever). But exploring the problem space, or having a good look at the required engineering, is. And may be cheap as well.

[somenameforme]

If you held the same logic back towards the beginning of humanity then we'd all still be wandering about the woods poking each other with sticks. Most people don't believe things are possible which is probably some sort of evolutionary thing. A society full of people with their head in the clouds probably wouldn't work so great, but humanity would also stagnate without at least some people looking to the stars.

This could very well be why planned economies seem to struggle with innovation. People being able to devote significant resources to endeavors, that might not make sense to most, is how you get lots of failures, and the occasional revolutionary successes. Do everything by committee and all you get is a shinier version of what you had last year.

[ozim]

You went false dichotomy on this.

I say fad because I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime and I would say 90% it will never happen.

But that 10% possibility of it happening is important or 0.01% of possibility it happens in my lifetime.

It is important that people believe it is more than my numbers. It is important to spend money and work towards that goal.

Because alternative is much more terrifying.

[somenameforme]

That I did. Most people don't tend to think probabilistically, and my responses tend to assume that. Heh, kind of ironic.

However, I'm quite curious of something. I don't understand how one can think Martian colonization would never happen. We went from horses (for most at least) to putting a man on the Moon in about 60 years, and that's it? Or are you implying that you think Mars may be less desirable than other targets for colonization?

Almost regardless of what motivation you put forward for people - greed, curiosity, adventure, desperation, or whatever else you can imagine - it ends up with us expanding beyond Earth. The only way this might not be true is if it's somehow literally impossible, but the ISS is already an unstable hellish nightmare relative to Mars, and people survive there just fine for years at a time.

[close04]

With the power of hindsight many decisions look obvious. But many others look silly. For every "discovery of the Americas" there were thousands of expeditions that fizzled out in a worthless desert, middle of the ocean, dead end cave.

The argument that "progress always needed bold steps" can lead into dead ends too. Past experience isn't enough to justify future steps without additional evidence. Exploration and learning are always good reasons but if you jump to the "it's good business" step before knowing all you can reasonably know, it's probably a fad. It's shooting in the dark. It could still hit the target, or it could miss. You only really know if something is a fad or not with hindsight.

It's hard to say with certainty today whether Mars is a viable target for colonization in the long term compared to other places like Titan or even the Moon. Before you drill for oil you do a lot of exploratory activities. If those bring back solid positive results then you go for the full blown thing. Before you launch a business you build a business case. Did anyone provide a solid business case and exploratory evidence for why "going for Mars" is the viable future?

As far as I can tell it's not scientists pushing for colonizing Mars. All we have to go on is the push from a man widely known to pump up the value of his own companies (which this would do and then some) by repeatedly making sweeping promises he failed to keep.

[somenameforme]

This [1] is pretty much exactly what you're looking for. Zubrin is one amongst countless voices, of all back grounds - certainly academic included, pushing for Mars colonization. Even as far back as the 60s NASA, under Von Braun, had drawn up extensive plans for settling Mars. This was all cancelled by Nixon, in large part because he was worried that a catastrophe under NASA would look bad on his political career. If he only knew what was coming.

Musk has become demonized mostly because of his politics. He's made bold claims and overwhelmingly fulfilled them in space. For instance there was a time when something we now take for granted - autonomous landing reusable rockets - was deemed impossible by the powers that be. They were even taunted by Boeing et al along the lines of 'yeah, we tried that long ago - the economics don't work. it's cute to see you having a go at it though.'

He's also brought the price to get things to space down multiple orders of magnitude relative to the Space Shuttle. And similarly before him, electric vehicles were glorified go-karts for virtue signaling hipsters. Having any public political opinion in a country as divided as America is going to make a whole lot of people hate you, but I think the efforts to try to marginalize what he's done are a mixture of silliness and ignorance. If he died tomorrow he'd already go down as the Edison of this generation, and there's yet many a decade remaining for him to cement what may be the ultimate legacy of the first man to make humanity truly multiplanetary.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars

[WalterBright]

It wasn't that long ago that HN had a spirited discussion about how data centers in orbit could not possibly work. But it looks more and more like Musk is going to deliver.

[cucumber3732842]

>No one really believes that we can affordably...

People said that about everything. I wore a $10 silk tie to work today and ate toast with a $1 Avacado on it.

Marco Polo would shit a brick if he saw Interstate 90.

[hugmynutus]

Add to the list that martian dust contains a massive amount of carcinogens meaning any air/dust lock has to be an ISO-6 clean room.

Sure it is a "solved" problem but all the solutions are very heavy.

[gosub100]

This is the first time I've heard of that. What are some of the carcinogens? I know the radiation is bad there, but I didn't know the regolith was toxic.

[peterburkimsher]

Not to mention supplying astronauts with food and managing their waste for 6+ months.

[rented_mule]

And if we're keeping costs proportional, send orders of magnitude more rovers and that helps the time argument for rovers as well.

[baq]

A geologist with a shovel could do 10 years of Curiosity’s science in an hour.

[ianferrel]

For the cost of sending one human there for a week, we could send thousands of robots there for years.

There is no way that human space exploration is ever cost effective with robot space exploration.

[II2II]

Manned missions would still have constraints. In some cases, they would be far greater (e.g. due to the necessity of keeping the astronauts alive). Where there are fewer constraints, it would be intertwined with the cost of sending people to Mars. They may be able to travel faster, but a lot of that is going to be because of a larger energy budget. It is doubtful they could travel further, since there are still going to be limits on how far they could travel (humans need infrastructure). That said, perhaps they could cover a larger area (within a smaller radius) than robots. Risk is also a limiting factor, and it is a far bigger one with people. Humans may be more flexible, but you aren't going to have those romantic scenes of people scaling down steep slopes or spelunking in caves. It could be done, but the chances of something going wrong will inhibit it.

While on the topic of human flexibility, it is important to understand that it will be limited due to the resources available. What we saw on Apollo 13 wasn't the product of people trying to expand beyond the mission objectives with what is on hand, it was a last ditch effort to save the Apollo crew. They could afford to do unintended things with the equipment on hand since the only other option was to admit defeat then let people die. Even the very much fictional The Martian was based upon that premise. Treating it as a thought experiment: the primary response was to terminate the mission and evacuate. The part about the lone survivor on Mars was about ditching every mission objective in the name of survival. It would be very difficult to even create a fictional narrative of a human team going beyond the abilities of a similarly appointed robotic mission without abandoning reality altogether.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Can we realistically send humans to Mars plus the return trip? I would maybe believe we can do a one way trip and leave those astronauts to die after snapping some pictures.

[ridgeguy]

I suspect there are substantial numbers of us in our 70's+ who would volunteer. Why not go out having made an amazing contribution?

[adonovan]

I'd be surprised if there's a single person alive who would volunteer for a suicide mission to a miserable cold dark planet and could travel there for nine months in a tin can through a harsh radiation/muscle atrophy/psychological environment and arrive in any condition to conduct useful scientific work.

[WalterBright]

Suppose one had a diagnosis of 1 year to live. Why not expend it doing something great?

[WalterBright]

I've been excoriated for making that suggestion.

[jahnu]

I’m no expert of course but I get the impression that we’re trying to run before we can walk. Many more robotic missions and way more basic research done more scientifically first could quite plausibly get humans there quicker in the end. Reading A City on Mars I found myself thinking this is many orders of magnitude more complicated than Apollo and will take more time.

[gwill]

sending a human there also contaminates the planet more, allowing us to learn less.

[WalterBright]

I will never understand that point of view. Mars is a lifeless rock.

[fc417fc802]

As far as we know. As of right now, we are reasonably confident that we haven't contaminated it. So if anything resembling biological byproducts turn up we can say with reasonable confidence that we have discovered evidence of historical life on mars. As soon as a human sets foot there that's no longer the case.

That said, personally I'm in favor of manned missions to as many bodies in the solar system as possible.

[WalterBright]

> As far as we know.

You could argue that forever. When is it time to accept that there isn't any there, and if there is, it is insignificant?

[fc417fc802]

No idea, but presumably that would be after we've explored a fair bit of it. We've barely scratched the surface.

It seems quite plausible that there could be ground water. If that's the case (and I suppose even if it's not) it wouldn't be at all surprising for the cave systems to contain microbial life.

[WalterBright]

There's always going to be one more place to search.

We should be spreading Terran life everywhere in the solar system, not pretending we are some sort of contagion.