Which place on the surface of Mars will most likely landing spot for a manned mission

[Pawelk198604]

Which place on the surface of Mars will most likely landing spot for a manned mission

In my opinion it should by Cydonia, i know little about Mars, but Cydonia look very intriguing and mysterious place, is certainly worth exploration is so much herd about it

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90631-Does-there-ware-any-robotic-mission-to-Mars-Cydonia

[Streetwind]

Wherever NASA's Mars 2020 rover will land is a decent candidate, as that rover will be specifically equipped to look for signs of past life (as opposed to Curiosity, which is specifically equipped to look for signs of environmental conditions that might once have been amenable to life as we know it). If Mars 2020 manages that big discovery, NASA will in all likelyhood want to send human geologists and exobiologists to that spot. A single human can do in half an hour what takes a rover a week or more, and a team of two or three staying there for the time it takes to wait out the return window could effortlessly do many times the research that all our landers and rovers combined have ever completed in the history of Mars exploration. They just need enough stuff to do wherever they land. So the landing site will be chosen with the maximum possible scientific interest. And that is likely where past life has been confirmed before.

[VirtualCLD]

A single human can do in half an hour what takes a rover a week or more, and a team of two or three staying there for the time it takes to wait out the return window could effortlessly do many times the research that all our landers and rovers combined have ever completed in the history of Mars exploration.

I've seen this statement a couple of times, but I have an extremely hard time believing it. I will start off by saying that I too, do not have any hard evidence to support my opinion, so please keep in mind that the following is my opinion based on observation only. A human, or team of humans, can do more here on Earth than what a rover could do on another planet. The problem is, humans are going to be limited to the same equipment that a rover has, because we can't send every piece of equipment that they could want up into space. The best thing geological that the Apollo astronauts did was return samples to be studied here on Earth, which can now be done by a rover. Any geological experiments they did on site, including Harrison Schmitt, could be done just as easily via remote with today's technology. I think the only way to get better results than what a rover can do is to do a sample return and study those samples on Earth in laboratories with a team of humans.

[Nibb31]

Which place on the surface of Mars will most likely landing spot for a manned mission

In my opinion it should by Cydonia, i know little about Mars, but Cydonia look very intriguing and mysterious place, is certainly worth exploration is so much herd about it

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90631-Does-there-ware-any-robotic-mission-to-Mars-Cydonia

We have already explained in that thread that "Cydonia" is nothing special compared to other places. We are more likely to find signs of life in ancient river beds or places where there are signs of liquid erosion or recent liquid activity. There is no point in maiking the exact same thread.

The location of a manned outpost would probably have to follow

- Easily accessible landing site.

- Mild climate and adequate solar exposure.

- Easy terrain for a SEV rover.

- Various different environments/features in less than a day's reach from the rover.

I suppose the first two criteria point to a fairly flat, low altitude, equatorial landing site.

A single human can do in half an hour what takes a rover a week or more, and a team of two or three staying there for the time it takes to wait out the return window could effortlessly do many times the research that all our landers and rovers combined have ever completed in the history of Mars exploration.

This argument is often thrown around, but it is false. Robotic missions have performed much more science than manned missions to Mars, simply because there are no manned missions to Mars. The reason for that is that it is too damn expensive to do a manned mission to Mars. The scientific return simply isn't worth the investment compared to a robotic mission.

A manned expedition would be limited in terms of radius around the landing site and duration of the stay, a few kilometers at most, and a couple of months. While humans could do more sampling in a week than a robot, they would reach diminishing returns after a week because they would only be picking up more of the same rocks in the same area for months until the launch window. Science isn't about the quantity of rocks that you pick up. It's more about the variety of samples from various areas of interest and over longer durations. By comparison, a number of robots can cover a wider area of a longer period with less maintenance, risk, and at a fraction of the cost.

Humans would also miss all the long duration data, such as weather, climate, seasonal variations or sismological activity. Humans also have this pesky habit of spending a large part of their time on sleep, hygiene and feeding. All of these activities require equipment that would be better spent on science, if that's what your mission is for. Humans are also dirty, messy, clumsy, fragile, and they make mistakes.

The actual science return depends on the equipment that the human crew carries, but that same equipment can very well be operated by a robot and sent to perform the exact same experiment for much cheaper. There is simply no single experiment that requires human presence that could not be teleoperated from Earth.

In science, you design an experiment around a hypothesis, not around who operates the experiment. The only scientific value of sending humans to live on Mars is to learn about living on Mars, which is only useful if we have a reason to live on Mars other that to study living on Mars. QED.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Nibb31

[Aethon]

I have a ton to say about this but litlle time before work. I'll just state :

There is much to be said for analyzing things in situ. A fresh Mars sample tested on Mars, may be quite different when taken from Mars' pressure /atmo, packed into a return vessel and shipped across the vacuum of space for 18 months. Compounds degrade, gasses sublimate. What you get home isn't what it was when it was in its natural environment.

For this reason I have always thought the Sci lab in KSP should give an extra 10 percent sci points on returned samples as well as the experiments that are transmitted back.

[Pawelk198604]

So it's not possible that Mars was once thriving living planet, with sapient civilization?

Edited August 26, 2014 by Pawelk198604

[peadar1987]

Well, Curiosity is expected to travel about 19-20km during its operational lifetime. Its peak speed is about 90m/hr, but it usually moves at far lower speeds.

Opportunity has covered 40km in 11 years.

The Apollo 15 Rover covered 30km in less than 3 days.

Yes, eventually a rover would be able to do almost as much science as a human, but if a suitably interesting landing zone was found (the real-world equivalent of the boundary between several biomes), humans would be able to gather an incredible amount of data from a large and geologically-varied area in the time it took until the next launch window home.

[Sky_walker]

So it's not possible that Mars was once thriving living planet, with sapient civilization?

And what makes you think that it would be possible?

[Nibb31]

So it's not possible that Mars was once thriving living planet, with sapient civilization?

There is no reason to believe that.

[Mazon Del]

I've seen this statement a couple of times, but I have an extremely hard time believing it. I will start off by saying that I too, do not have any hard evidence to support my opinion, so please keep in mind that the following is my opinion based on observation only. A human, or team of humans, can do more here on Earth than what a rover could do on another planet. The problem is, humans are going to be limited to the same equipment that a rover has, because we can't send every piece of equipment that they could want up into space. The best thing geological that the Apollo astronauts did was return samples to be studied here on Earth, which can now be done by a rover. Any geological experiments they did on site, including Harrison Schmitt, could be done just as easily via remote with today's technology. I think the only way to get better results than what a rover can do is to do a sample return and study those samples on Earth in laboratories with a team of humans.

So the thing about this is that given the same equipment between the human and the rover, the human will still be able to do more science, but this is simply because the human is capable of moving around faster. Curiosity has a top speed of something like 2-5 miles per hour, but it will never actually go that fast, the wheels are too fragile. That speed is mostly a byproduct of the wheel motor design for helping it with things like sandy ground and such. A human can walk around, over obstacles that Curiosity would never move near. The human can do some analysis that the rover cannot. For example, they climb to the top of the hill and see two boulders separated from each other, they can possibly guess which one is more useful to walk to. Just things like this result in the human being able to do more work simply because as automated as the rovers are, they cannot do analysis like that to as deep a degree as humans can. Yet anyway.

[Nibb31]

Well, Curiosity is expected to travel about 19-20km during its operational lifetime. Its peak speed is about 90m/hr, but it usually moves at far lower speeds.

Opportunity has covered 40km in 11 years.

The Apollo 15 Rover covered 30km in less than 3 days.

Yes, eventually a rover would be able to do almost as much science as a human, but if a suitably interesting landing zone was found (the real-world equivalent of the boundary between several biomes), humans would be able to gather an incredible amount of data from a large and geologically-varied area in the time it took until the next launch window home.

Again, it's not about the numbers. It's not about speed or distance or the quantity of rocks it can bring back. It's about the scientific return on investment and the quality of the data.

A manned rover's range is limited by the ability to get back to base if it breaks down. The Apollo LRV excursions were planned so that at any time the astronauts could walk home. For this reason, a manned Mars expedition would typically include at least two SEVs and a crew of four, so that one crew could rescue the other crew. But even then, you have to plan for the contingency of a failure on the second SEV. This is what seriously limits the exploration radius of manned expedition.

A robotic rover doesn't have to care about that. Robotic rovers are only limited by the landing weight. But if we are capable of landing a 3-ton manned SEV on Mars, we could just as well land a 3-ton robotic rover with a far longer range than the SEV and a much more capable science payload.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Nibb31

[Sky_walker]

Humans can observe and make decisions in an instant. Robots at a very best can navigate on their own and collect some basic data, but for anything more - they need input from earth introducing significant lag and - due to limited amount of observation done - decisions made on earth are not always as good as these made by a person in place who can instantly change a point of view, focus on one subject or another, move stuff around without preparing days for that, etc.

Movement speed isn't everything. Even in an area 2x2 meters - human would be MUCH faster than automated rover in "doing science" and he could discover things that rover never would have (humans can improvise to find something interesting - robots are very limited in that, even for a safety reasons).

[KerikBalm]

Well, Curiosity is expected to travel about 19-20km during its operational lifetime. Its peak speed is about 90m/hr, but it usually moves at far lower speeds.

Opportunity has covered 40km in 11 years.

The Apollo 15 Rover covered 30km in less than 3 days.

The Apollo 15 rover could be operated by a robot just as well, its not like the thing was pedal powered.

The Apollo 15 rover 210 kg with a 36km range on the moon (low gravity lowers power consumption)

Opporotunity weighs 185 kg, goes farther, and is a mobile lab with wheels, not just a pure transport vehicle.

Curiosity's "expected" travel distance should be compared with opporotunities expected travel distance... We'll see how far it actually goes, just wait.

The lunar rover was for getting from point A to point B, and did not do on site analysis. The robot rovers do on site analysis, they are in no rush, if they pass something interesting, they stop and have a look.

For the cost of sending 1 human, you could easily send hundreds of robots... even if the robots are slower.

If terrain is limiting, build a better robot... like a mechanical spider.

If you want faster robots, land a nuclear reactor, then they can operate at much higher power levels.

Relying on solar and radioactive decay is one of the major reasons they are so slow.

[Frozen_Heart]

If terrain is limiting, build a better robot... like a mechanical spider.

Would something like a combination of bigdog and curiosity work? Surely it could handle the terrain much better than a wheeled vehicle?

[peadar1987]

Again, it's not about the numbers. It's not about speed or distance or the quantity of rocks it can bring back. It's about the scientific return on investment and the quality of the data.

A manned rover's range is limited by the ability to get back to base if it breaks down. The Apollo LRV excursions were planned so that at any time the astronauts could walk home. For this reason, a manned Mars expedition would typically include at least two SEVs and a crew of four, so that one crew could rescue the other crew. But even then, you have to plan for the contingency of a failure on the second SEV. This is what seriously limits the exploration radius of manned expedition.

A robotic rover doesn't have to care about that. Robotic rovers are only limited by the landing weight. But if we are capable of landing a 3-ton manned SEV on Mars, we could just as well land a 3-ton robotic rover with a far longer range than the SEV and a much more capable science payload.

The Apollo 15 rover could be operated by a robot just as well, its not like the thing was pedal powered.

The Apollo 15 rover 210 kg with a 36km range on the moon (low gravity lowers power consumption)

Opporotunity weighs 185 kg, goes farther, and is a mobile lab with wheels, not just a pure transport vehicle.

Curiosity's "expected" travel distance should be compared with opporotunities expected travel distance... We'll see how far it actually goes, just wait.

The lunar rover was for getting from point A to point B, and did not do on site analysis. The robot rovers do on site analysis, they are in no rush, if they pass something interesting, they stop and have a look.

For the cost of sending 1 human, you could easily send hundreds of robots... even if the robots are slower.

If terrain is limiting, build a better robot... like a mechanical spider.

If you want faster robots, land a nuclear reactor, then they can operate at much higher power levels.

Relying on solar and radioactive decay is one of the major reasons they are so slow.

I'm not sure you would have to plan for a failure on two rovers, or even one rover, if they were designed to be reliable and fail-safe. Rovers are very mechanically simple. Basically a frame, with electric motors in the wheels. Design it so it can run on three wheels and give the astronauts a spare they can change and you've got yourself a reliable system. If you do have a second rover, the chances of failure of both of them are astronomically small. It's a Mars mission. you're never going to have perfect safety, the best you can do is minimise the risks. It's not like anybody's suggesting they send three ascent stages in case two of them fail.

As for sending hundreds of robots, I believe the cost of Mars Semi Direct is estimated at $55 billion (for a four-astronaut crew), and Curiosity cost $2.5 billion, so you would be able to send 22 rovers for the cost of one manned mission. Now you would have to do a very detailed analysis of potential landing sites, and possible experiments that could be carried out, something that is not within my capabilities, but I don't think it's as clear cut as "robots=better in every circumstance". I'm guessing there are situations and landing sites where 4 astronauts will be able to do as much if not more science than 22 rovers, not counting the extra benefits like the prestige, and the fact that it would be the first step towards becoming a multi-planet species.

I take your point about power, but if you have a central facility to run operations from (like a lander or habitation module) you can centralise power production and charge rovers from there. A mechanical spider is probably too complex to be trusted to work for a long period of time on Mars without failing, whereas wheels and electric motors are some of the most reliable technologies we have.

The reason that the Mars Rovers are so slow is partially down to power, but also down to the signal lag from earth, something else that would be avoided by charging them centrally.

[Nibb31]

Would something like a combination of bigdog and curiosity work? Surely it could handle the terrain much better than a wheeled vehicle?

Yes, but again scientists aren't typically interested in speed. They favor reliability and stability, which means the less joints, hinges, and actuators, the better. Therefore: wheels.

I'm not sure you would have to plan for a failure on two rovers, or even one rover, if they were designed to be reliable and fail-safe. Rovers are very mechanically simple. Basically a frame, with electric motors in the wheels. Design it so it can run on three wheels and give the astronauts a spare they can change and you've got yourself a reliable system. If you do have a second rover, the chances of failure of both of them are astronomically small. It's a Mars mission. you're never going to have perfect safety, the best you can do is minimise the risks. It's not like anybody's suggesting they send three ascent stages in case two of them fail.

Something like the SEV is definitely not simple. It has all sorts of failure modes, from power to propulsion to computers to life-support and it can get stuck in the sand or roll over. Ignoring failure modes and contingencies is not a way to plan a manned expedition. Minimizing risks means that you have at least one plan for any single point failure.

You don't want your astronauts to die just because their rover gets immobilized 20km from the base.

As for sending hundreds of robots, I believe the cost of Mars Semi Direct is estimated at $55 billion (for a four-astronaut crew), and Curiosity cost $2.5 billion, so you would be able to send 22 rovers for the cost of one manned mission.

No, because the cost of a series of Curiosity based on the same design would be a fraction of that cost. The major part of that budget was development of the rover, not production of the hardware.

Now you would have to do a very detailed analysis of potential landing sites, and possible experiments that could be carried out, something that is not within my capabilities, but I don't think it's as clear cut as "robots=better in every circumstance". I'm guessing there are situations and landing sites where 4 astronauts will be able to do as much if not more science than 22 rovers, not counting the extra benefits like the prestige, and the fact that it would be the first step towards becoming a multi-planet species.

4 astronauts is not a species.

Nobody said that robots are better in every circumstance, but as far as science goes, there is no technological barrier preventing a robot from doing anything a human can do in an exploration context.

Yes, prestige and inspiration are the only reason to do a manned expedition, but science as a sole justification is not worth it. So who is willing to pay $55 billion for a "prestige and inspiration" stunt ?

PS. I believe that $55 billion figure is wildly underestimated.

[K^2]

Why is this an either/or thing? Can't we have robotic rovers service a manned research station? If a rover breaks down, it's just equipment loss, and we still get any data it managed to transmit before then. If it comes back with interesting samples, they can be further studied by the team. Send several smaller rovers in different directions, and you can optimize the ability of the ground crew to conduct the research.

[Seret]

Now you would have to do a very detailed analysis of potential landing sites, and possible experiments that could be carried out, something that is not within my capabilities, but I don't think it's as clear cut as "robots=better in every circumstance".

The fact that actual space agencies (who do have the capabilities to do this analysis) have consistently opted for robotic exploration for several decades now suggests that the cost/benefit equation is skewed hugely toward our metal friends. There's also the fact that the price bar for human missions starts exceptionally high, and the impact on space agencies of their failures is hugely greater than the loss of a probe. They continue to wave the flag for human exploration (it's good for PR), but their bread and butter is robots.

Why is this an either/or thing? Can't we have robotic rovers service a manned research station?

Indeed, given that any potential manned mission is likely to be several decades in the future it seems likely that the astronauts would have a lot of automated and semi-automated help. They may not physically drive rovers much themselves, but prefer to remotely operate aircraft and rovers.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Seret

[peadar1987]

Something like the SEV is definitely not simple. It has all sorts of failure modes, from power to propulsion to computers to life-support and it can get stuck in the sand or roll over. Ignoring failure modes and contingencies is not a way to plan a manned expedition. Minimizing risks means that you have at least one plan for any single point failure.

You don't want your astronauts to die just because their rover gets immobilized 20km from the base.

I'm not ignoring failure modes and risks, I'm an engineer. It's my job to think of ways around them. Four independently powered wheels means that a loss of propulsion in any one (or three) is not catastrophic. Backup power and life support systems can be included. If humans are involved it can be dug out of sand, or moved slowly using sand tracks. All I'm saying is that failure can be made a remote enough possibility that you won't need 3+ rovers in case two simultaneously suffer multiple independent failures of critical components and their backups.

No, because the cost of a series of Curiosity based on the same design would be a fraction of that cost. The major part of that budget was development of the rover, not production of the hardware.

Fair enough point, but the same could be said of a manned mission. The second one will be far cheaper and dilute the initial R&D costs.

4 astronauts is not a species.

I said the first step, not the only step.

Nobody said that robots are better in every circumstance, but as far as science goes, there is no technological barrier preventing a robot from doing anything a human can do in an exploration context.

Not at all. But humans are faster and more flexible, which has a lot to be said for it.

Yes, prestige and inspiration are the only reason to do a manned expedition, but science as a sole justification is not worth it. So who is willing to pay $55 billion for a "prestige and inspiration" stunt ?

Not the only reason, but one of the additional benefits.

PS. I believe that $55 billion figure is wildly underestimated.

That's up to you to decide.

Why is this an either/or thing? Can't we have robotic rovers service a manned research station? If a rover breaks down, it's just equipment loss, and we still get any data it managed to transmit before then. If it comes back with interesting samples, they can be further studied by the team. Send several smaller rovers in different directions, and you can optimize the ability of the ground crew to conduct the research.

This is a really good idea. Manned research station, controlling several rovers by remote control. You can still charge the rovers at the base, but you lose the communication lag, and can explore quickly without putting humans at undue risk. If a rover breaks down, humans can go and repair it..

The fact that actual space agencies (who do have the capabilities to do this analysis) have consistently opted for robotic exploration for several decades now suggests that the cost/benefit equation is skewed hugely toward our metal friends. There's also the fact that the price bar for human missions starts exceptionally high, and the impact on space agencies of their failures is hugely greater than the loss of a probe. They continue to wave the flag for human exploration (it's good for PR), but their bread and butter is robots.

I think it has a lot more to do with your second point than your first. Funding doesn't work like a piggy bank, so NASA can't just do nothing for ten years and save up the money for a manned Mars mission, even if the rewards would be as great as sending multiple rovers.

Just out of curiosity, what are your feelings on Apollo? Do you think man should have gone to the moon, or would we have been better off just sitting tight and waiting until robots were advanced enough to do the job for us?

[Seret]

Funding doesn't work like a piggy bank, so NASA can't just do nothing for ten years and save up the money for a manned Mars mission, even if the rewards would be as great as sending multiple rovers.

Well, they wouldn't be doing nothing, any more than they were doing nothing for the first nine years of Apollo.

Just out of curiosity, what are your feelings on Apollo? Do you think man should have gone to the moon, or would we have been better off just sitting tight and waiting until robots were advanced enough to do the job for us?

The primary objectives of the Apollo mission were largely political, not scientific. Seen from that angle it was very successful, and you could argue that it was one of the things that drove the Soviets to pursue foreign-policy goals that were above their ability to sustain. Soviet desire to try and match US prestige spending hastened their empire's collapse.

The robots we were able to deploy at the start of the 60's when Apollo kicked off were quite rudimentary too, so manned exploration at short ranges made sense from a science point of view. If Apollo had not happened I'm quite sure that by now we would have replicated all of it's science findings robotically, probably at substantially lower cost.

It's a bit false to try and view Apollo through the prism of modern space exploration though. Priorities were different back then. Manned exploration was prestigious, and big expensive programmes were in vogue. "Faster Better Cheaper" characterises the modern approach, where we send more, smaller missions that are allowed to fail due to being unmanned. It's turned out to be very effective. Just look at all the amazing stuff coming in from the planets almost daily.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Seret

[Mazon Del]

Well, strictly speaking the Apollo missions were very succesful scientifically as well. The new President of WPI is actually on the team of people that decide goals for Curiosity, and she recently gave a presentation about how if we sent a probe to Mars to try and bring stuff back, but instead of a some rocks, it only managed to bring back a grain of sand, it would still be wildly valuable for science. They can take an object the size of a grain of sand and slice it into about 30+ different sections with enough mass that they can send them to the 30-ish most powerful measurement tools on the planet and get just as much data as if they had a rock to work with (they just wouldn't have anything to put in a museum).

Rovers are definitely cheaper to send out than a manned flight. The problem is that they are not cheap enough that their mission controllers are generally willing to take risks with them. Which is one of the other advantages about having an astronaut on scene. Mission control is millions of miles away, and if you think a risk is warranted, even MC recognizes there isn't anything they can do to stop you from pursuing it. They will just ask you to pause while they examine the situation to see if they can provide you with an estimate of how to go about it (how much of an idiot you are being) so that you can safetly accomplish your goal.

[Nibb31]

This is a really good idea. Manned research station, controlling several rovers by remote control. You can still charge the rovers at the base, but you lose the communication lag, and can explore quickly without putting humans at undue risk. If a rover breaks down, humans can go and repair it..

The only advantage in this scenario is the reduced lag in teleoperating the robots. Is that benefit of reducing lag worth spending billions and risking lives to build an outpost? And if so, why land the astronauts at all? Cut out the expensive lander and they could control the same robots from low Mars orbit, which would combine low-lag and wider area coverage by multiple robots.

But seriously, robots are getting more and more autonomous. Curiosity operators only send coordinates and the robot figures out the best route to get there autonomously. The lag isn't a problem. In a decade or two, exploration robots are only going to get more and more capable, closing the gap between manned and unmanned exploration. By the time we are capable of sending a manned mission, we will have robots that can crawl, climb, dig, fly, send samples back to Earth, and fix themselves, which would negate any advantage of humans over machines.

Just out of curiosity, what are your feelings on Apollo? Do you think man should have gone to the moon, or would we have been better off just sitting tight and waiting until robots were advanced enough to do the job for us?

Nowadays, we could get most (if not all) of the scientific data returned by Apollo with robots and telepresence, for a fraction of the cost and risk of human lives. Apollo was done for "prestige and inspiration", with a political goal. It was not conceived as a way to get scientific data. The science return was a mere by-product. Was Apollo a first step to making us a Moon-dwelling species ? I don't think so. It was a one-off political stunt designed to impress the world.

Manned exploration is a solution looking for a problem. You want a manned mission and are grappling at straws to find a justification for it. In reality, we will go to space when we have a reason to do so. Science is not that reason.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Nibb31

[PakledHostage]

It's a bit false to try and view Apollo through the prism of modern space exploration though. Priorities were different back then. Manned exploration was prestigious, and big expensive programmes were in vogue. "Faster Better Cheaper" characterises the modern approach, where we send more, smaller missions that are allowed to fail due to being unmanned. It's turned out to be very effective. Just look at all the amazing stuff coming in from the planets almost daily.

I agree.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would like to say again that I really don't understand how manned missions are somehow more "inspirational" than robotic missions? Sure, as a one-off accomplishment, the Apollo landings stand out as being among the greatest in history. But robotic missions like the Voyagers, Cassini, and even MSL are up there too. Why put all of our eggs in one basket? For the cost of a manned Mars mission (or even a replacement ISS, for that matter), we could easily fund robotic lander missions to Jupiter's moons, Titan, and probably even the Uranus and Neptune systems. Sure a manned Mars landing would be an incredible accomplishment, but I don't think it is worth sacrificing the scientific ROI and "inspirational" PR value of a whole spectrum of robotic missions for it. The reality is that funding for scientific projects is limited in the current financial climate. Lets put our money where it reaps the biggest benefits.

[Mazon Del]

Oh there are plenty of problems that manned space presence solves, there are a few companies working now to exploit them. The issue with NASA is that their goal has always been about exploring space, not exactly developing it. Incidental to their goals of exploration through being hired for projects, or having some budget to push around, they have managed to develope some industry. But we are now at the point where companies can begin to do things like asteroid mining and the like (soon anyway, go planetary resources!).

What is going to be interesting is that in the near term asteroid mining is going to have two sides to its business. Side number one is of course the rare earth metals, but this side is very complicated. Theoretically they will be able to quickly flood the Earth based markets with product and crash the prices (China is going to object big time), but this is not immediately in their best interests. Chances are likely that they will manage the rare earth metals much like diamonds are managed. In reality they are not very rare and thus shouldn't be expensive, but artificial rarity keeps the prices high. Oh for sure they will undercut places like china, say something like slicing off 1/3 the price, that way everybody goes to them. But up until other companies get in on it (and probably form some horrible conglomerate of asteroid barons) they can just kind of do what they want.

The second side of this is going to be iron and the like. Chances are for the immediate period of time they will do one of two things, either stockpile it in orbit for later use or send a bunch down for some money. Eventually though the big money for them will be in orbital refineries and production plants. Even if all they do is charge materials costs at 2/3 of the price for getting similar goods into orbit, they will make a killing because that is a cost savings of millions for everybody else. More likely, they will actually scale their price with their production because there is no market in space yet that they need to worry about disrupting and it would be to their advantage to make it as cheap as possible to encourage more customers.

Once that happens, then things get easier for NASA as their probes and ships suddenly become much cheaper.

[Mr Shifty]

But we are now at the point where companies can begin to do things like asteroid mining and the like (soon anyway, go planetary resources!). .

I'm curious how PR and similar enterprises are going to bring mined resources back to Earth. It's hard to find info on this, but the Shuttle could return maybe 20 tons of cargo from orbit, and I suspect it had the most capability of any spacecraft ever launched. (AFAIK, currently there are only 2 operating spacecraft that can return cargo from space: Dragon and Soyuz.) 20 tons of iron is about 2.5 cubic meters, which is about 0.00009% of total current world production of iron ore, and would be worth about US$2000. It's hard to imagine how it could be profitable, unless we're talking an industrial-scale operation. Total global rare earth production is, at present, at about 100,000 tons. To match that you'd need thousands of launches per year. In 2013, there were a total of 81 attempted rocket launches to space worldwide (including 3 which failed). In the 1970's (the decade with the most rocket launches of all time), there averaged about 123 launches per year.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Mr Shifty