why the hell have we not gotten to mars yet

[Bill Phil]

On March 11, 2016 at 3:40 PM, tater said:

Kennedy would not have gone joint on the Space Race, and the war was his creation. Honestly the proxy war via space is the whole Space Race in a nutshell. Lose that competition, and you lose that funding level. I think that in a real sense JFK's death might have been critical to the program going forward. The country was so shocked by his assassination that the legacy Apollo would provide in no small way helped it along (remember, too, that his assassin was a fellow traveller with the Soviets). As counterfactuals go, JFK not getting killed might actually result in the program ceasing sooner as war costs increase, and then the Apollo 1 fire... 

As for Shuttle during the Nixon Admin, wasn't it internal NASA pitching it for post-Apollo efforts? The real STS, of course included the nuclear ferry, and space tug, not just shuttle, it was after all supposed to be a system, not a single vehicle.

Had the whole thing been done, we might have a different take on what became the Shuttle program.

Kennedy was actually discussing a cooperative lunar programing with the Soviets some time before he was assassinated.

On March 11, 2016 at 0:04 PM, Spaceception said:

He means that there are likely civilizations out there who never go to space because they have no reason to do so, or don't figure out the technology fast enough, and hence die out.

Cosmic phenomena aren't the only way to go extinct

Some examples:

Nuclear war, and following nuclear winter,

Runaway global warming,

Overpopulation (Yes, dozens of billions of people can easily fit on Earth, but how do you give them food and water?),

Planet-wide pandemic,

Gray goo (Runaway nanobots),

Ice age,

Over religious society's who completely reject progress and are forever stuck with stone-age technology (Probably the most extreme, but it's possible)

Even a nuclear war would only kill hundreds of millions, and the ensuing nuclear winter would be very  short, if it even occurred. By no means extinction.

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Kennedy was actually discussing a cooperative lunar programing with the Soviets some time before he was assassinated.

Even a nuclear war would only kill hundreds of millions, and the ensuing nuclear winter would be very  short, if it even occurred. By no means extinction.

The radiation from a nuclear war could push humanity back to the pre-industrial era, if it got bad enough.

And JFK's cooperative lunar landing might have killed Apollo, as the landings were about being better than the Soviets.

[PB666]

11 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Kennedy was actually discussing a cooperative lunar programing with the Soviets some time before he was assassinated.

Even a nuclear war would only kill hundreds of millions, and the ensuing nuclear winter would be very  short, if it even occurred. By no means extinction.

Just another point:

- Kennedy served under 3 years, most of the space moon shot was done under the Johnson administration.
- That was over 50 years ago, the US has generated 2 magnitudes more GDP/(rated for inflation) since then, and we still have not done these things.

Here is what we did - we collected gobs of moon rocks and sand - we brought them back and we are still analyzing them.
Here is what we did not do - build a colony, establish an outpost.

Can I make a simple point, one that NASA has probably thought through exhaustively - what are your goals that cannot be obtained by unmanned missions
- Dance on mars - hard to get scientific support
- Collect samples - Unmanned can do
- Do chemistry - Unmanned appears to be doing - we have new rovers going
- Build an outpost - What is the purpose of the outpost
    - explore potential habitation - premature
    - test building methods and longterm human protection schemes (not being discussed here)

- Build a colony - way, way, way premature.

So lets cut this down to its bare essential element. The very hardest thing that we have to do in a mars mission is not the travel to mars, we can do that, its the landing. But we are talking in this thread about 60 year old schemes that do not deal with the problem of landing (except Orion Nukes which lets just face it, impractical and prone to Murpies law). But what are humans going to do? colonize. Ok. No survival plan. Return - reorbit is even harder. If you land on mars with an nuclear engine, you cannot get out of the friggen rocket, so forget colonization.

Miemos is a dirt ball, its got loose soil, you can land with hyperglolic or LFOx. The loose substrate can easily be dug into, you could create an underground chamber to protect your inhabitants from whatever. Th dV for landing on the moon from HEO is about the same as for the Moon. If there was such a thing as an ISRU you could potentially create fuel for landing a traditional vehicle on mars.
 

 

[tater]

^^^ this underlines the point that manned missions anywhere are a stunt. There is no reason to send people other than to send people.

[Ten Key]

1 hour ago, tater said:

^^^ this underlines the point that manned missions anywhere are a stunt. There is no reason to send people other than to send people.

Charles Lindbergh's flight was a stunt. Nautilus' trip under the North Pole was a stunt. Climbing Mount Everest was a stunt. 

Apollo 8 was a stunt. 

There is nothing wrong with stunts. Our robots are fine for teaching us about the solar system, but only manned flight can teach us more about ourselves. 

[Frybert]

9 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

Charles Lindbergh's flight was a cheap stunt. Nautilus' trip under the North Pole was a cheap stunt. Climbing Mount Everest was a cheap stunt. 

Apollo program was an extremely expensive stunt. One that was never done again mostly because of how expensive it was.

Fixed a few lines for you.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Frybert

[B787_300]

Why we havent been is a question of the money and time involved.  Rockets have historically been very very expensive machines as they were built from absolute op of the line products and had multiple reduancies where possible.  This meant that rockets and the things they launched were so expensive that very few companies and only governments had the capital to work on them.  That has been changing recently and prices have started to come down.  

It also helped that back in the 60s and 70s there was the mentality of we have to beat the Soviets that was really spurred on by Sputnik.  Remember the only thing that the Americans did before the Soviet Union was land a Man on the Moon, and land on mars. Everything else till the end of the space race the Soviets did first. 

While it is sad that we have never been to Mars with a manned mission it is probably for the best as we know a LOT more now than we did in the 70s and 80s.  Also as to why Humans should go is because robots are very limited to what they have on had and their programming. Humans can improvise and nothing beats a good set of eyes for observations and tests.

 

Just now, Frybert said:

Fixed a few lines for you.

No you didnt, as none of those were "cheap" stunts when they were fist done. the Spirit of St louis was a VERY expensive plane which was totally custom built. the Nautilus was a stunt but one that proved a very important geopolitcal point of subs can be ANYWHERE (and was very expensive as that reactor was the first of its kind). Climbing Everest was probably the cheapest of the stunts that he mentioned but that was still important as it proved that people could do it. 

[Bill Phil]

18 hours ago, fredinno said:

The radiation from a nuclear war could push humanity back to the pre-industrial era, if it got bad enough.

And JFK's cooperative lunar landing might have killed Apollo, as the landings were about being better than the Soviets.

It certainly could. But that's by no means an extinction level event.

All I can tell you is that there were some discussions about it.

[tater]

33 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

Charles Lindbergh's flight was a stunt. Nautilus' trip under the North Pole was a stunt. Climbing Mount Everest was a stunt. 

Apollo 8 was a stunt. 

There is nothing wrong with stunts. Our robots are fine for teaching us about the solar system, but only manned flight can teach us more about ourselves. 

I'm all for stunts, my post didn't make a value judgement. None of the reasons for manned spaceflight include "science," however.

[tater]

22 minutes ago, B787_300 said:

Also as to why Humans should go is because robots are very limited to what they have on had and their programming. Humans can improvise and nothing beats a good set of eyes for observations and tests.

This is flatly untrue, particularly in 2016. You could possibly make this argument successfully in the early 1970s, when our remote capabilities were less capable, but even then, you need to directly compare missions of identical expense. Apollo would have returned more samples unmanned, but with the same level of expense.

 

 

[B787_300]

Just now, tater said:

This is flatly untrue, particularly in 2016. You could possibly make this argument successfully in the early 1970s, when our remote capabilities were less capable, but even then, you need to directly compare missions of identical expense. Apollo would have returned more samples unmanned, but with the same level of expense.

No it is not.  Curiosity can ONLY do what it is programmed to do with the instruments it has on hand.  A human with a small lab kit would be able to do more science than the rover can.  Also the rover is limited to what is right infront of it and what the science team tells it to look at. a human can look around and quickly go oh the back of that rock looks like it might be interesting but the rover might not be able to get there or even see the rock in the first place as it was not commanded to look there.  and If you program the rover to do that then you have a much much more expensive rover that you have to send to mars.

[tater]

How many curiosity rovers could be sent for the same total expense of a manned Mars mission? Also, the man is there for a far shorter time than each rover, possibly on the job over a decade.

Compare your example with equal cost spent, and mass delivered/returned but robots. 

There is no science that cannot be done better by robots. 

I'm still fine with a manned Mars mission, but any science they do is gravy, it's not about science.

[B787_300]

There is no science that cannot be done by bots BUT the issue is you have to build the bots to do the science before hand. also Curiosity costed about 2.5 Billion. A human mission that might be able to do about 4 times science of Curiosity would cost about 8-10 billion.  But would be done on a much faster time scale as each rover takes about 3 years to build if not longer and then you have to wait for the right launch windows. While rovers where the right way to start, it is now time to send People there.

[fredinno]

 

25 minutes ago, B787_300 said:

There is no science that cannot be done by bots BUT the issue is you have to build the bots to do the science before hand. also Curiosity costed about 2.5 Billion. A human mission that might be able to do about 4 times science of Curiosity would cost about 8-10 billion.  But would be done on a much faster time scale as each rover takes about 3 years to build if not longer and then you have to wait for the right launch windows. While rovers where the right way to start, it is now time to send People there.

I think you are severely underestimating the cost of interplanetary manned missions....

Either way, human missions are basically like "super-flagship" missions. They return huge amounts of science, in a short time, but are expensive as all hell. The ISS has returned huge amounts of science, even though it's very expensive, and the majority could be done by clusters of recoverable capsules, over longer periods of time. Which is also why unless human missions are designed to end in permanency (bases), they are a bad place to shoot for, as only a small amount of science in comparison to the cost will be returned from the short duration missions.

[tater]

1 hour ago, B787_300 said:

There is no science that cannot be done by bots BUT the issue is you have to build the bots to do the science before hand. also Curiosity costed about 2.5 Billion. A human mission that might be able to do about 4 times science of Curiosity would cost about 8-10 billion.  But would be done on a much faster time scale as each rover takes about 3 years to build if not longer and then you have to wait for the right launch windows. While rovers where the right way to start, it is now time to send People there.

There is no possible way a manned mission provides science per dollar gains on probes. That's a flatly rediculous claim. We all like space travel, we all like manned space efforts, but the idea of increased science per dollar is absurd. 

ISS has returned nearly no science at all, except for human factors in space (a circular argument, as the only reason for that is more people in space). The only good science was an instrument that didn't need humans, but the ISS solar array.

Btw, 100 billion is a good benchmark for a manned Mars mission.

Edited March 14, 2016 by tater

[fredinno]

17 minutes ago, tater said:

ISS has returned nearly no science at all, except for human factors in space

Source?

I have a few science experiments for you that have returned useful science data.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/Protein_Crystal_prt.htm

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/199.html

NASA has a list of experiments done on the ISS here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments_category.html

You can't look at that and say there has been no useful data from the ISS.

[Bill Phil]

39 minutes ago, tater said:

There is no possible way a manned mission provides science per dollar gains on probes. That's a flatly rediculous claim. We all like space travel, we all like manned space efforts, but the idea of increased science per dollar is absurd. 

ISS has returned nearly no science at all, except for human factors in space (a circular argument, as the only reason for that is more people in space). The only good science was an instrument that didn't need humans, but the ISS solar array.

Btw, 100 billion is a good benchmark for a manned Mars mission.

Actually the ISS has provided lots of science. Not all for humans, either. The only issue is sheer cost.

Also, I'd say it's be more than 100 billion.

[tater]

41 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Source?

I have a few science experiments for you that have returned useful science data.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/Protein_Crystal_prt.htm

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/199.html

NASA has a list of experiments done on the ISS here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments_category.html

You can't look at that and say there has been no useful data from the ISS.

I said nearly no science, explicitly taking human factors in space off the table as circular. So if it's about man's ability to live in space... it's useful, but only for man in space by definition, it has no use aside from men in space. I agree we need some of that data for our manned space stunts, though---and I love manned space stunts, I just don't delude myself that they are "for science!"

You'd also need to demonstrate that the science that you like could only be done by humans in space, not remotely.

The most important ISS science has been the AMS, and it is only at ISS because of power needs, it's not like it needs people.

20 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Actually the ISS has provided lots of science. Not all for humans, either. The only issue is sheer cost.

Also, I'd say it's be more than 100 billion.

I agree the 100 billion is lowball, I was guestimating assuming a shuttle-type budget for ~20 years.

As I just said, ISS hasn't done much of anything, and particularly if you take only experiments that require active, human interaction in a way impossible to do remotely. Even many of the bio experiments could likely be done remotely, frankly. It's not just that people can do an experiment, the only experiments that count are those that can only be done by people, or that somehow a gajillion dollar ISS, plus the cost of the people is somehow cheaper (which seems pretty unlikely).

Edited March 14, 2016 by tater

[Raven Industries]

I'm not sure how you can claim that there isn't much science done on the ISS when doing science is one of the main purposes of it.

[tater]

2 hours ago, KerbalSaver said:

I'm not sure how you can claim that there isn't much science done on the ISS when doing science is one of the main purposes of it.

ISS was built for two reasons.

1. To give Shuttle something to do.

2. To give Russian (post Soviet) aerospace something gainful to do so they'd not take jobs building rockets for bad guys.

That's it. Any science is gravy. The bulk of the science on ISS is human factors in space, which is incredibly useful---for human travel in space. It has no other utility, it's a kind of specific, applied science (keeping mammals alive in the hazardous environment of space). Any science you claim is better with people needs to be possible either only done directly by people, or better by people (either markedly better data collection, or it needs to be more cost effective, ideally both).

For a lowball manned Mars program, you could send many Curiosity sized missions, and still have money left over for sample return. Yeah, given a few km radius, a man could gather more data in some finite time period... but he cannot gather as much as dozens of robots over decades.

Edited March 14, 2016 by tater

[Raven Industries]

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. You seem to have just admitted that science is done on the ISS. 

[mikegarrison]

5 minutes ago, KerbalSaver said:

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. You seem to have just admitted that science is done on the ISS. 

Yes, but the question is whether the science justifies the ISS or whether the ISS justifies the science. Was the ISS built because we needed that science, or are we getting that science because we needed something for the ISS to do?

[tater]

10 minutes ago, KerbalSaver said:

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. You seem to have just admitted that science is done on the ISS. 

Science about humans in space is being done. Humans are not needed to do any other type of science in space, except to study how humans deal with being in space.

Astronomy? Humans not needed in space.

Planetary Geology? Humans not needed, but they can do it, even well, but not cost-effectively.

Physics? Humans not needed.

Biology? Humans are mostly not needed, and there is a break between the biology of living in space (only useful for getting things to live in space), and the basic science of life in general (I'm not a biologist, perhaps there is some fundamental life science that requires microgravity, but if so, does it require people, or can the experiment be done remotely?)

Medical? This is the circular reasoning science of humans in space. "We need humans in space to do science!"  "What science do you do?" "We study humans in space!"

Chemistry? Humans are not needed, as the plumbing for chemistry in microgravity likely removes direct interaction anyway.

 

I'm all-in for human spaceflight---but it has exactly nothing to do with doing science, that's just an awesome byproduct.

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by tater

[PB666]

14 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Yes, but the question is whether the science justifies the ISS or whether the ISS justifies the science. Was the ISS built because we needed that science, or are we getting that science because we needed something for the ISS to do?

ISS is a multidisciplinary platform. For a science example, to automate a study takes excessive amount of time, but would prolly be more precise than human doing the same study. But if you need a quick and dirty answer you can get the humans to do a preliminary study which then allows you to design a better automated study. This is not completely black and white.

Lets say we had humans on Mars. Now lets say we have machines around that human doing Martian tests. Now lets further say that humans have some fabrication capacity. If tests X, Y, and Z suggest that tests XA, YA, and ZA be run. With the automated machine you have to design (5 years), fabricate (5 more years) and Send (2 more years) to get a result. You may still have to do that with a human on Mars, but that human may also do a few quick and dirty experiments which means you can be writing papers (keeping your science going) while designing a better apparatus to send to Mars.

The problem is this, at least the way I look at it. We don't send scientist per say, we send astronauts, which are more or less lab technician II to IV grade. A well educated engineer would be great and this would be good for many things up until you actually start doing biology and organic chemistry. The second problem, the way I see it, you have got at least 12 years of infrastructure building just to get humans to Mars, once there you might have a pay-off, but the infrastructure pipeline to keep humans alive is very complicated and not amenable to the Russian/Private sector-style supply failures.

There is another problem I don't see anyone talking about. I think we can find a way in space to deal with radiation, I think if we tweek the science we can extend human longevity in space, but on Mars, so far as yet I don't see anyone talking about excavating martia to build domiciles underground where it is radiation safe. So in essence we are talking about land and return missions, and really other than gathering Martian rocks (which can be done robotically) there is no advantage.

As I said before on occasion, you are not designing a manned mission with some sort of experimental design that would be difficult to do robotically, there is no sense other than watching the way humans deteriorate after being stranded (or killed on impact) on Mars.

 

[mikegarrison]

41 minutes ago, PB666 said:

The problem is this, at least the way I look at it. We don't send scientist per say, we send astronauts, which are more or less lab technician II to IV grade. A well educated engineer would be great and this would be good for many things up until you actually start doing biology and organic chemistry.

Many mission-specialist astronauts are very highly trained and qualified scientists and engineers, and most of the pilots are also trained as engineers too.