It's been forty frikkin' years!

@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

On the 11th December, 1972 two US Astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, landed on the surface of the moon in the lunar capsule from Apollo 11. Doing so they became the last two men to date to pay a visit to our satellite. What has happened to NASA's space exploration plans? Forty years??? Give me a break.

Your point is well taken! Thank u.

David

0 Replies

@Brandon9000,

I don't see the ultimate goal of present space activity is to make the human race a spacefaring species.

The goal of present space missions is to study Mars. The ultimate goal everyone talks about is to better understand the development of life. This is why our robot rovers and orbiters are looking for signs of water in the past and focusing on geology and atmospheric chemistry.

When the robots detect clear signs that life existed (or exists) elsewhere, it will be will be a pivotal point in human history and our understanding of our place in the Universe.

Machines are much better than humans at getting to Mars. Machines are much better than humans at doing the grunt work of analyzing rock samples and getting a spectrometer to the Martian atmosphere.

Machines are even better at listening for the biggest event possible. If a message ever comes from a sentient race outside of our understanding, it will be heard first by machines.

This doesn't mean that humans won't right poetry about it.

Our stated ultimate goal for the space program is to better understand our Solar System and our origins. Robots do this much much better, cheaper and faster than humans. We should resist than the vain urge to send humans into space.

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@maxdancona,

They are alreay on the Moon, Mars and the other planets.

This is all for public consumption!

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

. We should resist than the vain urge to send humans into space.

Why 'vain urge'?

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"The Earth was Man 's Cradle; it shoud not be his grave."

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Max doesn't seem to keep up with things. There's a probe on the way to Pluto right now, and it will arrive early next year. But far more interesting and exciting is NASA's Dawn mission. It has already visited Vesta thes second largest of the asteroids, and will arrive at Ceres, the largest asteroid. Dawn is also interesting because it uses three xenon ion thrusters. That array is far more powerful than any other spacecraft's propulsion system ever used, after separation from the launch vehicle. In my never humble opinion, the so-called asteroid belt holds the key to the next important step in space exploration.

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@Setanta,

Not at all Setanta, the Dawn mission is right in line with what I was saying.

Quote:

Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of its earliest history by investigating in detail two of the largest protoplanets remaining intact since their formation. Ceres and Vesta reside in the main asteroid belt, the extensive region between Mars and Jupiter, along with many other smaller bodies. Each followed a very different evolutionary path, constrained by the diversity of processes that operated during the first few million years of solar system evolution. When Dawn visits Ceres and Vesta, the spacecraft steps us back in solar system time. - See more at: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/#sthash.1KHo44DK.dpuf

This is another fine example of a mission that is done much better by machines than by humans.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

LOL

Next important step?! whoaaaddd

NASA=Never A Straight Answer, those idiots at NASA just **** with your head, babe

And remeber, NASA is military!!!!

O btw they have lost the moontapes!!!!!! Yeaaaah!!!!!!! Sure I believe them! NOT!!

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Machines are superior to humans in space. There is really no reason to send humans at this point... and there won't be until the time we are ready to colonize.

Machines aren't yet as good at exploring environments as humans are. It took the Mars Curiosity Rover almost a year to get where a human would have gotten in only hours. And a human would have gathered an understanding of the environment to a much greater degree in a tiny fraction of the time. At present, humans are in a completely different league from robots. It won't be like this forever, but it is for now.

That having been said, obviously it's harder to get a human onto Mars and return them home than it is to put a robot there, or we would have send a human already. But even with that being the case, we should not lose sight of the vast difference in exploratory capabilities once exposed to the environment. Robots still have a very long way to go before they can match us, both in mobility and in data gathering capacity.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Quote:

Machines aren't yet as good at exploring environments as humans are. It took the Mars Curiosity Rover almost a year to get where a human would have gotten in only hours.

And yet the rovers have done their tasks, including discovering evidence of water (a huge accomplishment) and greatly increasing our understanding of the planet, at a fraction of the cost of human experiments. This amazing performance, combined with the multiple orbiters and instruments are far more cost effective then a human mission.

I don't think the distance is the right metric (the rovers have made a hell of a lot of scientific progress without travelling). And, remember that the robots are extensions of humans... the humans are understanding the environment just fine by proxy.

I don't think there is any good argument for sending humans.

2 Replies

No one is doing much to protect Man
from what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

It took a while and a half for human DNA to evolve.
We shud not keep all our DNA in one basket, Max.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

We can easily send our DNA up with the machines.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

That will have a sterile result.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Don't argue with them Lustig. It ain't worth it.

AMEN!

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

No. That is what we DO in A2K.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

No. That is what we DO in A2K.

That may be what you do, David...but you do not speak for all of A2K.

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@maxdancona,

Dance all you want, you were basically saying that all NASA is doing is exploring Mars. My remark was not addressed to the issue of automated versus human space vehicles.

By the way, the rovers on Mars are all clustered in one small region of the Vastitas Borealis. We're not seeing very much of Mars, at all.

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@maxdancona,

Having done their tasks isn't much of a standard, though. Anybody and everything can be wildly successful if they're allowed to define their own goals.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The goal of present space missions is to study Mars.

I was just pointing out how poorly informed you seem to be. I was not commenting at all of the utility of mechanized exploration.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

maxdancona wrote:

The goal of present space missions is to study Mars.

Setanta wrote:

I was just pointing out how poorly informed you seem to be.
I was not commenting at all of the utility of mechanized exploration.

Mr. Setanta seems to love
to make it personal.

David

1 Reply

It's been forty frikkin' years!

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