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By sustained I mean: continual, prolonged, persistent, lasting etc. In other words once started manned exploration will progress without interruption, which has unfortunately epitomized our approach during the last few decades.
Unfortunately as long as politicians make the decisions especially regarding funding, we will fall well short of our potential.
If business could be encouraged to contribute things could move along more rapidly, but only if the accountants who rule them can see a guaranteed profit within a very short time frame. Unfortunately space exploration, especially the manned type is a long term investment and therefore far too much of a gamble for risk averse people.
Can a sustained human space exploration programme ever be achieved? In addition will it ever become respectable and gain the prominence it deserves?
Although I am excited by the promise of any space exploration related activities including robot probes (as against none at all, which I'm sure many politicians would be in favour of as space unfortunately isn?t a long term vote winning topic!) I don't agree that we should abandon any plans for manned missions. On the contrary I believe that we should budget and plan for both options to run in tandem and support each others activities. Data gathered by probes and rovers etc can then be used back on earth and by following manned missions.
In my opinion we should allow the robot probes to do what they are best at, ie:- gathering data, and allow people to do what they are best at, ie:- hands on exploration and use of human intuition to study interesting aspects of their surroundings and sort out problems and challenges which crop up unexpectedly. Heath Robinson lives and will be sorely needed on future manned missions!
If the first Hubble repair mission hadn't been manned it would never have succeeded. For instance take the double door closing incident; if it hadn't been for the astronauts lateral thinking abilities, the doors would never have closed properly! In fact in face of exasperated comments from the astronauts, mission control eventually said, ?Let the boys get on with it? or words to that effect. Even designers of robot probes admit they sometimes become quite frustrated with them when for instance objects or even plants are not detected by cameras, even though the people concerned can see them quite plainly! Or the rover becomes stuck and they have to help it!
Of course, manned missions are going to be more expensive and risky than robot missions, but throughout our history, people have been willing to take big risks because the possible gains are potentially huge, as with Mars when seen in the context of the centuries to come. After all the money spent isn?t destroyed, but circulates around the economies involved thereby bringing growth and jobs.
The case for manned missions is so obvious that I cannot understand why people are so against it? Their objections seem to deny the curiosity of the human spirit and the need for exploration, adventure and the joy and exhilaration of discovery.
:bars2:
The use of a mass driver on Mars would be very energy expensive. It will be far easier to mine asteroids and perhaps use a mass driver to send materials to Mars, the Moon or near Earth orbit (with careful aiming!) or perhaps utilise lagrange points to store them until needed.
Of course the effect of the mass driver on the orbit, position and velocity of the asteroid would have to be calculated and allowed for.
:;):
Given that the atmosphere on Mars is presently very thin, that light gases rise, it has been proposed that the solar wind blew away most of the original Martian atmosphere and the effects of unfiltered ultra violet rays, how will we be able to retain a viable and breathable atmosphere on Mars after terraforming?
:hm:
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