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Why only send one or two probes at a time to Mars?
Cost you say? But why are they so expensive?
Well I think those probes are so expensive because they are all-in-one probes and big. They have everything on board on one probe. The motto should be:
1. Redundancy in numbers not parts. A probe doesn’t have internal backups but multiple similar tasks probes
2. Specialization. I only do this.
3. Cheap but greater numbers.
4. Smaller but more of them.
5. Smarter.
Why not have specialized probes? One probe should be a scouter and mark interesting objects and go on. Another probe could have special anaylizer that would put that marked object into its to-do list. If that probe is done another with another tool would follow it and do its tricks with the marked object. The specialized probes should come in pairs or more so you can allow one to fail. Ideally you would also have a repair probe. That has tools to take apart a probe and replace an engine or clean a probes solar-cells.
To save money on communication devices and size the probes only come with a low range communication devices and have them communicate with a communication stationary drone or satellite.
For example you would have a scout probe that only has a camera on board. It would scout the area and mark targets. Then a probe with a drill would follow and take a sample of the target. That probe can take multiple samples so a route can be planned to make a rendezvous with an analyzer probe. Which will take all the samples and analyze them. All communications will be done between probes between the communication probe that is contact with a satellite.
However I would recommend that AI’s should be studied more before this is done. My idea would be probes that can act independently and also learn via a network. Like those soccer playing robots.
Humans are also specialized. You have CEO's, musicians, MD doctors, teachers and more professions. You don't have humans (normally) that can do everything. It’s just not efficient.
Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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That sounds like it could get pretty expesive fast with all those separate units needing to be developed. I think our existing MER rover design could be reused and sent every launch window and i'd expect the cost to be much lower than the current mission, given that all the hard work has been done already...
It would be interesting to see some sort of itemized cost analysis breakdown of the MER project.
Where was the most money spent?
- The boosters to get them to Mars might perhaps be the most expensive non-reducable cost.
- The R&D costs are already spent, sending slightly modified copies should be relatively cheap
- The mission control costs probably wont change that much regardless of the mission, even if through advanced AI the probes could become self-suficient.
- the raw materials and construction of the probes should be cheaper if we reuse the design and fabrication methods. Very little of the materials and expertise are "off-the-shelf" so its probably pretty expensive on a per-mission basis.
Sending multiple simplified lander packages (such as the NetLanders proposal or those DeepSpace impactors on the ill-fated MPL mission) is probably the cheapest way to get probes into all the very dangerous and varying terrains cheaply because you can afford to produce a lot of simple single-purpose probes that can be sent on one booster and dispatched en-masse to a lot of different landing sites on one mission, but unfortunately they wont be able to rove around without increasing the weight and limiting to one probe per booster, and so the cost goes up signifficantly.
"I think it would be a good idea". - [url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/]Mahatma Gandhi[/url], when asked what he thought of Western civilization.
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- The boosters to get them to Mars might perhaps be the most expensive non-reducable cost.
I agree they will not get a lot cheaper at this moment of time but I said that they new rovers will be smaller. With that I mean each rocket should be able to fit 8-12 of them.
- The R&D costs are already spent, sending slightly modified copies should be relatively cheap
No need to redesign just use the parts you have now and make smaller and specialized rovers. And by that they will consume less power and need smaller everythings.
- The mission control costs probably wont change that much regardless of the mission, even if through advanced AI the probes could become self-suficient.
Well I don't need the rovers to be 100% self-suficient just able to cope with a loss of communication and the 10 minute lag and handle simple situations.
- the raw materials and construction of the probes should be cheaper if we reuse the design and fabrication methods. Very little of the materials and expertise are "off-the-shelf" so its probably pretty expensive on a per-mission basis.
Who says we need new hardware? I say just put one special hardware device on each rover. The rest can be basically the same. I believe in the motto if it aint broken then don't fix it.
but unfortunately they wont be able to rove around without increasing the weight and limiting to one probe per booster, and so the cost goes up signifficantly.
Ok but a swarm of rovers can do a lot more then one rover. Especially if you account for the repair rover that I mentioned. That is able to clean solar cells (the biggest reasons why rovers stop nowadays) and do other simple maintance tasks.
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