What has provided us with more information?

[brandbll]

I have a question, and hopefully it has not already been asked, but which Missions have provided more information about their respective objectives, the Appollo missions, or all the Mars Rovers combined(I mean the Viking missions too.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="3">You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you've never heard!</font></p> </div>

 

[frodo1008]

In the first place the two missions went to very different places. Apollo went to the moon, and the Mars Rovers, well.... they went to Mars obviously!<br /><br />Further the information provided is of a very different nature. <br /><br />The Mars Rovers have provided a very great deal of on the spot information, quite probably far more than the Apollo landings. However, what they don't provide is some 800+ pounds of the surface of Mars itself! Scientists have been kept very busy with this actual material from the moon ever since it was brought back!<br /><br />What many here don't seem to realize is that the science and manned programs of NASA should NOT be in competition with one another, they should compliment on another instead.<br /><br />Besides, while information itself is wonderful and useful, it is NOT the ultimate goal of the space program anyway. The ultimate goal is the exploitation of the resources of space for the betterment of mankind. This can't be done with either robots or humans alone, but must be done with both!<br /><br />The bottom line answer to your query would be that neither missions were better than the other. They were just too different to make this kind of comparison at all!<br /><br />

 

[qso1]

You already covered the points I might have made but I will add this:<br /><br />For brandbll:<br />If your making a comparison based on cost (What other reason would it be?), the answer is obvious. Robotic probes are cheaper. However, saving money by going robotic alone has already been proven to me to be a sham.<br /><br />NASA budget in the Apollo era was 2-4% GDP.<br /><br />Today its just under 1% GDP. A 50 plus % reduction. What other Government agency that is still in operation can make this claim.<br /><br />Savings from the 50 percent cut? Wiped out in just one year...practically any year since 1969 by just budget deficits. This year alone the budget deficit is 2 to 3 times NASA spending in its entire existence. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[vulture2]

Primary purpose of Apollo was not science or exploration, but demonstration that American system was better than Communism. After Soviets were first with Sputnik and Gargarin, this was essential. Once the first landing was achieved, funding was cut and public lost interest. Had sample return been the issue, it could have been done robotically even then.<br /><br />Human exploration and settlement is a worthy goal, but it requires technology that makes it practical. Amudsen reached the South Pole in 1912 with dogsleds. [The dogs were expendable, with some dogs being used as food for others.] Returning to the Moon with solid fueled expendable rockets (at least we had liquid propulsion in '69) is like returning to the Pole 30 years later with newer dogsleds. It is to costly to allow practical, permanent habitation.<br /><br />In reality no one returned to the pole until 1957, when they had modern [fully reusable] aircraft that made a permanent base safe and feasible.

 

[mlorrey]

You have a good point, Frodo, but I believe that it is appropriate to at least develop a metric of how much data or science time to expect per dollar invested. I don't care what you use for a metric so long as it is reasonable and reflective of fulfilling the goals of the missions.<br /><br />For example, the Mars Rovers budget was such that we are getting science from Mars at a rate of something like $100/minute (plus whatever the ongoing cost of the mission team at JPL is). Conversely, the ESA's Titan probe produced science data at a rate of millions of dollars per minute.<br /><br />Time may not be an appropriate metric, and you may even conclude that with bytes of data, some data is inherently more valuable than other data. Fair enough, however I think it is still useful for scientists to justify their projects based on some means testing of cost effectiveness, as compared either to other programs in the past, or some standard target of dollars per science minute, or megabyte, or kg of material.<br /><br />How much data a probe recovers can be compared against its designed capacity to recover data, and the capacity per dollar invested. The Mars Rovers are obviously a very effective program because they have been running for two years while they were designed for merely 90 days of operation. That is a credit to the Rover designers and builders. Contractors involved should be rewarded for such great performing equipment. That will incentivize contractors into building excellence into future probes.<br /><br />I read once that back during the Roman Empire, contractors got paid 50% on building completion, and 50% if the building, bridge, or aqueduct was still standing something like 10, 20, 40 years down the road.

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Primary purpose of Apollo was not science or exploration, but demonstration that American system was better than Communism. After Soviets were first with Sputnik and Gargarin, this was essential. Once the first landing was achieved, funding was cut and public lost interest. Had sample return been the issue, it could have been done robotically even then. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Beating the Soviets was the primary interest of the White House and Congress. But NASA's primary objective was research. They didn't choose to have their funding cut, nor did they anticipate it.<br /><br />However, it is not true that a comparable sample return could've been done robotically even then. After several attempts the Soviets managed to return a few grams of lunar dust. Apollo returned bags and bags of moon rocks. And each rock had been carefully selected for return by the specially trained astronauts. Robotic remote control was not that good then. (It's debatable whether it's that good now. Telepresence has come a huge ways since 1969, but it still has its limitations.) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[JonClarke]

Yes, we would be doing well to improve on the advanced Luna missions, even today. The three sample return missions (Luna 16, 20, 24) brought back 300 grams between them. The rovers (Luna 17/Lunakhod 1, Luna 21/Lunakhod 21) covered 47 km, look over 100,000 images, and studied hundreds of sites.<br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[brandbll]

I think it's fair to compare the 2 missions. The point of the robotic missions is that you don't have to bring the rocks back and instead you do the science right there on the spot. And yes this is sort of an argument for what is more effective, manned space missions or robotic ones. It begs the question why spend so much money trying to send humans to mars when you already have proof you can keep robots on their for YEARS at a time for a fraction of the price. I just think that if you think about how much money we would be spending on this whole thing it would be so much smarter to just launch more landers. Not to mention the design possibilities are almost endless for robots. It seems like a waste to just do a manned mission to bring a bag of space rocks back. As the first person who replied to me stated, the budget has been severly cut for NASA. So shouldn't we be more concerned with how we spend our money and how much we get out of it? I'm not sure what the current estimate is for a Mars expedition, but i do know this, it will cost way more than whatever they predict it will. The manned missions would be worth taking if there was actually a reason we needed them there, like to harvest some sort of energy. But if its just to look for signs of life and bring back some rocks it seems like a serious misallocation of our financial resources. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="3">You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you've never heard!</font></p> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>And yes this is sort of an argument for what is more effective, manned space missions or robotic ones. It begs the question why spend so much money trying to send humans to mars when you already have proof you can keep robots on their for YEARS at a time for a fraction of the price.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />It's still expensive though. It's just all we can afford right now.<br /><br />I'd say there are pros and cons to both approaches to exploration. There's a huge advantage to having a geologist right there on the spot. I mean, the MERS do magnificent work, but they only move a few yards a day at best, because that's all the more they dare do given the duration of daylight and the long lightspeed round trip for radio signals. Robotics is improving, but I don't feel sufficiently confident about autonomy to send a fully autonomous probe yet. There would be too much risk of it getting confused or stuck and returning virtually nothing of use. But the technology is always improving, so it's not beyond the realm of probability for it to happen in a couple of decades.<br /><br />Returning rocks, however, is of enormous benefit. With a mobile remote-controlled or autonomous lab, you are limited to the duration it can afford to spend with a particular rock, and the experiments that it has on board. With returned samples, you have an enormous luxury of time -- you can study them for years and years to come and do pretty much anything you can imagine with them. Tests that have not been invented today can be applied to the samples when those tests are invented. So there's a lot more you can learn from a returned sample than from something examined only in situ by a robotic lab.<br /><br />In my opinion, robots have three benefits: cost, longevity on the surface, and reduced risk to human life. But if you have unlimited budget and resources (like that'll ever happen), manned missions will be superior. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[JonClarke]

Or even just a bigger budget <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />Jon <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[frodo1008]

As I have pointed out in numerous posts, while exploration is important, it is not the most important reason for the space program at all! The most important reason (for the future of mankind) is the eventual exploitation of the relatively unlimited resources of space! <br /><br />In a relatively short time humanity will be running out of the resources of this planet. By short, I mean short even in comparison to the length of human history, let alone longer periods of time such as geological events take! And this is even if we are NOT hit by some kind of NEO!<br /><br />To me at least the high cost of either robotic or manned exploration can only be justified in relation to how much that exploration will eventually help in this exploitation of our solar system. At this time such efforts are indeed warranted! However, eventually it is going to take vast efforts in both the robotic and the human exploitation areas of the solar system to literally save the future of mankind! <br /><br />People simply MUST get over this incredibly stupid idea that humanity must compete with the very machines that we have created for our benifit in the first place. The future of mankind depends on a COOPERATIVE effort between humanity and its electro mechanical creations! <br /><br />

 

[brandbll]

Very good point Frodo <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="3">You wanna talk some jive? I'll talk some jive. I'll talk some jive like you've never heard!</font></p> </div>