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from your point of view all past, present and future rovers are only a waste of money, but (clearly) that's not true... you exagerate the problems of rovers to try to "kill" them
Maybe you should look up the definition of a "straw man" attack, you'll probably find this post in the dictionary even you boob.
Again you completely, utterly, totally, blythly just ignore my main point; I tell you that the raw quantity of science is not at all important, that a little high quality work is infinitely preferable to huge quantities of poor work. And what do you do? You go and "calculate!" You can't compare the work of robots and people.
Humans can climb, sort, and do more dexterous tasks than any machine, and you powerfully misjudge how hard it is to operate a robot. Whining about images in spectra that the eye can't see? Have the astronauts bring a camera and/or spectral goggles. Maybe put a heads-up display inside the helmet even. A little 1.8in hard drive could hold a few thousand pictures too. Whoops, there goes the robots' advantage.
but the Ames' plan (like my "VME") was to send MANY low cost ($50-100M each) moonrovers to EXPLORE the moon surface, not only to "find locations" for the "LSAM show" ...and that plan was DELETED in july...
...I've not a link
Then you are full of crap
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Humans can climb, sort, and do more dexterous tasks than any machine, and you powerfully misjudge how hard it is to operate a robot.
probably, you've not realized (or don't want to realize) that we will have ZERO moon exploration in the next 15 years and that 10+ years of moonrovers exploration are BETTER than NOTHING
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What is the term, "third times' a charm"
Again you turn right around and ignore my point, even though I have explained it and pointed it out several times now: why are a bunch of robot probes "better than nothing" compared to simply waiting for astronaut to arrive? So we spend lots of money, further delaying astronauts, on a bunch of rovers (and their transit bus, and their powerd landers) that will deliver alot of low quality science when we are already planning on getting high quality science not too long after?
You also ignore one difference between Lunar and Mars rovers, in that Mars rovers have the advantage of aerobraking, parachutes, and airbag landings. Lunar rovers will not, and instead require their own "mini LSAM" to get them safely to the surface. How much are those going to cost? But more importantly, how much are they going to weigh? One of the reasons that the current MERs were relatively inexpensive was since they would fit on the cheap Delta-II rockets and didn't need much of a lander, but will a Lunar probe even fit on a medium Delta or Atlas? What if they require a $300M heavy EELV instead of a $70M Delta-II? And that will also be a reoccuring cost for every single rover sent.
Some deal.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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...turn right around and ignore my point...
no, I understand your point, but it is (simply) wrong and unrational
...why are a bunch of robot probes "better than nothing" compared to simply waiting for astronaut...
why have space agencies sent (so far) dozens of probes in our solar system?
why will space agencies send dozens and dozens of probes in our solar system in next 50+ years?
why don't we wait the day the astronauts can land on Mars or go around Neptune to know the same things?
the answer is simple: we (as intelligent specie) want to know MORE of them NOW and NOT in 2030, 2050 or 2090 !!!
also, you (still) don't put in your mind how the real (giant) dimensions of the moon are and how little the ESAS missions will be!
while the moon surface is vaste like the earth lands, the ESAS exploration in 2020-2025 will be accomplished with 12 small vehicles, on 12 small landing sites, for 7 small exploration days of 4 small astronauts!!!
in 2030 (25 years away from now!!!) when we will (finally) have a small outpost on the moon (and ten more missions will be accomplished) 99.99% of the moon surface will (still) remains UNEXPLORED !!!
to explore the FULL moon surface with "humans" we must send THOUSANDS astronauts for 50+ years!!!
that may be a very good news for you (if you work for the company that build the expendable and expensive LSAMs...) but NOT for science and human knowledge!!!
ONLY a fleet of rovers can explore the ENTIRE moon surface in a few years and at a fraction of manned exploration costs!!!
...And that will also be a reoccuring cost for every single rover sent...
NASA, ESA, Russia, China, India and Japan are planning the launch of many lunar landers in the next 10-15 years to search/find "something" in the sites where they land... well... I only suggest to send MANY MORE of them on the entire moon surface to search/find "something" in ALL lunar sites!
about the rovers and launch costs, that depend of the purpose and dimensions of the rovers
the first (small) generation of "run and see" rovers may be very cheap and a dozen of the (with a single lander) can be launched with one $200M EELV like the Ariane5
bigger rovers (to better explore the most interesting sites) or sample-return vehicles may need more launches (maybe, one every two-four rovers) but ALL (small and big) rovers (if well designed and made) will be extremely productive since EACH rover will work 5+ years and explore the same surface of an earth's mid-country!!!
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I think each of the landers are stationary with no ability to rove let along cover the many miles of surface that would be needed in the 2 weeks of sun light before it goes dark again if solar battery powered. That means these rovers would need nuclear power which just made each lander even more expensive including the rover not to meantion probably out ot the weight class of Atlas or Delta rockets.
Would rovers of simular design to Spirit and Oportunity be what we would need even to explore and gain the answers to the science questions that need answering?
If they were nucleared powered, had a lander capable of getting it to the surface do we really need that much data to make the choice to go to stay?
You are right that man will only explore a small amount of terrain in the 12 missions but that is just the nature of the beast that we wish to explore and it will not be easy to cover it all.
Probes, landers and rovers are the means to get answers to science. As well as possibly to lay the ground work for manned presence.
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...size of the Moon versus the ISS is irrelivent...
the difference is too great to be "irrelevant"
yuo may be right for the first mission missions, but, when we will have many missions, longer and more complex, they will need a cargo-return vehicle
Regarding the ISS that is still going to be just a secondary function for the Orion. With the Orion optimized for Lunar (and later Martian) exploration visiting the ISS is both child's play and a matter of reorganizing the seats/cargo storage.
If the need for cargo-return develops they could just resort to one of the optional plans Orion had with essentially hollowing out the CEV. Given reentry and landing will largely be automated this wouldn't be a huge change from the crewed CEV - the only people entering it would be onboard the ISS and only briefly then. Since the current plans involve giving it alot of room and having moveable seats I don't think it'd be a much further step for a simple cargo-return craft.
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Perhaps you should remember the first rule about digging holes gaetano:
"when you are in a hole, stop digging"
Compare and contrast...:
-We will not be able to send people to the outer solar system for many decades probably, many of the locations to visit will be to places humans can't walk on, and frankly there is no reason to go out that far except knowledge, at least this century.
-We will be able to send people to the Moon soon, and Mars not too long thereafter. Both worlds hold the promise of tangible bennefits to the mother world this century, but only if humans go there. The knowledge that is most valuble (Lunar platinum, Martian life, colonization) cannot be obtained easily by robots except of the largest size.
To try and equate these two situations, and wave your arms about how if we do it one way for the outer planets we should do the same for the inner, is asinine and stupid. No number of little robots will accomplish what needs to be done, with their puny tools hardly able to scratch rocks or being disabled by a dune of loose dust, men are needed and should go.
For the last time, the amount of work done is totally meaningless if all that work is of poor quality. You can have a billion little rovers scour every last inch of the Moon's surface, but with their puny tools they will accomplish nothing! Take a trillion photographs, but if you can't tell whats inside a boulder of ejecta, or the volatiles content of polar regolith, or build a telescope on the dark side then its all for nothing!
The quality of the science, not the quantity, is what is important. We don't need to explore every inch of the Moon, the vast majority is not at all interesting or else is just a repitition of other areas. This is so obvious that your exclamation-mark ridden affirmations to the contrary show that you are either a stupid fool, or don't really believe what you write. You don't need to do a chemical analysis of ever piece of ejecta around a crater to tell what the meteor was made of, nor do you need to sample dust from the entire surface of the Lunar poles to get an idea of what they're made of, and so on and so on.
People can do these kinds of jobs much better than a robot can, we can climb down into rilles where robots can't, we can climb mountains where robots can't, we can drill into rocks where small robots can't, we can build delicate things where robots can't, etc etc etc. And eventually, we will probably want to live on the Moon anyway, if only to extract rare minerals. So, men should go.
And please, little "run and see rovers?" If they are small, then they won't be "running" any place. The little dinky Sorjuner rover on Mars didn't even go 50 feet in the time it operated. But anyway, the smaller the rover, the less capable its science suite is! Even a "medium" rover like the MERs though, what good are they? They can take pictures that only cover two of three regions of the spectrum, and their dinky RAT grinders take hours or days to even scrape a few millimeters of material off a rock, much less a core sample. And thats to say nothing of a chemical analysis rig.
And these MER sized rovers, while they were able to get to Mars with a Delta-II, since you have no aerobraking/parachutes/airbags you would at least need a medium-heavy EELV to carry it and its mini-LSAM to the Moon. You can't fit four nor even two on a modest rocket of reasonable cost. And five years? The Moon is a much more harsh place than Mars is, the rovers will be subjected to 400 degree temperature swings, tripple what they are on Mars, plus you have the two-week cold soak during Lunar night, as well as solar flares that will fry them. No nice Martian wind to clean the charged surface-sticking dust either Five years? Even one year will be doing phenominally well, which means you only get six months of actual use.
So, if it will cost $150M to buy a medium EELV, another $50M for the mini-LSAM, and say another $100M for the rover... you could only send a few rovers for the cost of one manned mission!
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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To sumarize GNCR, all that probes do or ever will do is collect future textbook data...and after school 90% of the public in any nation forgets anything trivial to the average way of life. Machines do build cities, we do.
Mars and the Moon are the best hopes for habitation, certainly for the next century. VSE is short-term ultimately but it will lead the way to longer efforts.
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To sumarize GNCR, all that probes do or ever will do is collect future textbook data...and after school 90% of the public in any nation forgets anything trivial to the average way of life. Machines do build cities, we do.
Mars and the Moon are the best hopes for habitation, certainly for the next century. VSE is short-term ultimately but it will lead the way to longer efforts.
I think you mean robots "don't"
More then that, alot of the really worthwhile science work to be done on the Moon involves getting at inacessable places (on mountains, down rilles, inside rocks, etc) where robots can't go, or at the very least would cost as much or more than humans.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Thanks for the correction - normally I edit those grammar mistakes...
Exactly on the money GCNR. We have the advantage of being flexible and to do the actual thinking and notice things even a robot with cameras may miss.
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To sumarize GNCR, all that probes do or ever will do is collect future textbook data...and after school 90% of the public in any nation forgets anything trivial to the average way of life. Machines do build cities, we do.
Mars and the Moon are the best hopes for habitation, certainly for the next century. VSE is short-term ultimately but it will lead the way to longer efforts.
I think you mean robots "don't"
More then that, alot of the really worthwhile science work to be done on the Moon involves getting at inacessable places (on mountains, down rilles, inside rocks, etc) where robots can't go, or at the very least would cost as much or more than humans.
There are also intangibles. An astronaut might happen to feel a need to look a certain way--and not be bound in a committee determining which way a bomb disposal robot goes--forgetting a find right between the wheels that got by them.
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