One of my college profs was a minor player in the Kennedy administration. He put it this way. "Whatever JFK might have felt personally about space exploration, his call to go to the Moon and back before 1970 was for one reason and one reason only -- to beat the Russians in the Cold War. If Khrushchev had announced that the USSR intended to be the world's leader in the pancake industry, Kennedy would have immediately asked Congress for federal funding for IHOP."
Apollo 11 served that purpose. Apollo 12 was also necessary, to demonstrate that 11 hadn't been the result of putting everything the country had into one effort which was beyond our resources to repeat, but that we could do it again and again. The remaining missions were unnecessary from a Cold War perspective, but as long as the technology had been developed already it was justifiable to get some good science done. But science, in itself, was never the main point of Project Apollo.
Manned space exploration for the sake of science is a very dubious affair. My figures here are from several years ago, but I have no doubt the same general situation applies today in the relative amounts, even if the numbers have changed. The National Science Foundation's annual appropriation was about six billion dollars per year. If you're familiar with academic research, you know what a powerhouse the NSF is. It's one of the big engines that funds that research in the USA. Go to any science department in any university here and there will be some researchers funded with NSF grants. When I was working on a Ph.D. I had an NSF grant.
A shuttle mission cost, at that time, about two billion dollars. Three shuttle missions cost as much as the NSF's entire annual appropriation. So in order to make any claim with a straight face that the Space Shuttle was worthwhile for the scientific benefits, each mission had to have a hell of a lot of experiments packed on it, more than the astronauts could possibly attend to -- but that meant those experiments had to be automated, which immediately brings one back to the question, if those experiments are automated, not requiring human intervention, what do you need the astronauts for?
But we've got our share of starry-eyed dreamers who think it's humanity's natural destiny to go out and colonize the galaxy, and that if Kennedy had lived, he would have been doing Vulcan hand salutes after Star Trek premiered. Some more rational folks warn of the danger of some super-catastrophe occuring, something like the asteroid that whacked all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, or any of a number of other such disastrous events. Those people say we should colonize Mars so that humanity would continue in some form even if Earth got clobbered by such an event.
Twenty years ago I wrote an article for an online magazine, a rebuttal to a writer who had made that argument. I pointed out that experts estimated that the probability of any super-catastrophe happening within a century was about 1 in 450, but there had been three devastating pandemics in the last fifteen centuries. The sixth century had the Plague of Justinian. The fourteenth century had the Black Death. And the early twentieth century had the Spanish Flu. If one wanted to spend money to safeguard humanity's future, I said, medical research was a far better bet than space exploration.
I was not a wizened seer. What I had written was just obvious to anyone with training in the medical or biological sciences. But I hope that a positive side effect of COVID is that more in the general population will come around to my way of thinking. Mars can wait.
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
What's the annual budget for the NSF at the present time, and how much would it cost to launch a mission to Mars with HUMANS???
Something tells me the cost of such a MARS MISSION would be at least 10 TIMES or more than the NSF annual budget.
FOUND THIS:
About NSF - Overview | NSF - National Science Foundation
https://www.nsf.gov/about
With an annual budget of $8.5 billion (FY 2021), we are the funding source for approximately 25 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social β¦
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The biggest concern in Living on Mars is the phenomenal cost connected with it. Newest NASA estimates, Mars mission will cost just about one billion dollar or more.
NASA has an estimate of 100 billion US dollars, SpaceX has 36 billion dollar estimate while Mars Society has 30 billion US dollar estimate. This also shows that even the cheapest estimate is equivalent to 2.5 million around the world journey with your friends and family members.
Real Cost for a NASA Manned Mission to Mars | Space ...
csewi.org/real-cost-for-a-nasa-manned-mission-to-mars/
So, letβs use an estimate of what a human mission to Mars is expected to cost β the number ranges from around $100 billion to $500 billion per mission.
Is Going to Mars Worth the Billions in Extra Costs ...
heavy.com/news/2019/04/mars-cost-astronauts-billions/
Something also tells me that there's no one willing to pay 100 BILLION to 500 BILLION for humans to go there.
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
Yep. And I can give another argument against sending people to Mars. Manned space exploration is very expensive, for two reasons. First, it requires a lot of additional technology to keep humans alive. You don't have to provide a breathable atmosphere, food, water, toilet facilities, et cetera for an unmanned probe to do its work. And second, with human lives at stake, the reliability of all the technology and other work must be higher. Screw up the math, as with the Mars Climate Orbiter mission, and some money has been lost and it's an embarrassment to NASA. Underestimate the danger of a pure oxygen atmosphere while taking shortcuts in building the spacecraft, as with Apollo 1, and three good men are dead.
Thirty billion to send people to Mars, according to the Mars Society? I think that's a terrible underestimate, but let's go with that number. By contrast, the Mars Pathfinder Rover cost $265 million -- https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=MESURPR
That's a 113 to 1 ratio. So, here is my challenge to those wishing to send people to Mars for science's sake. "You and I will each spend thirty billion dollars. You send your crew there. I, on the other hand, will send unmanned missions. One hundred and thirteen of them. After each one, I will review the results and incorporate the findings into planning my next mission. You will have your one shot deal, spending a good part of your money just keeping your astronauts' hearts beating, while I will take 113 steps in research, learning and revising my agenda each time, with far more of my money spent on discoveries. Let us do that, and at the end of that time we shall see who gets more real science done."
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
Development and construction of the lander cost $150 million and the rover about $25 million.
Does this mean the cost was another $175 Million (in addition to the other $265 MILLION mentioned) for a TOTAL COST of $435 MILLION???
And did you check the link and see the other argument put forth by the astronaut about how HUMANS are more efficient that ROVERS???
heavy.com/news/2019/04/mars-cost-astronauts-billions/
When it comes to distance covered, the humans won. The two Apollo 17 astronauts drove a distance of 35 kilometers on the moon in the span of three days β thatβs approximately 11.6 kilometers per day. As of February 2019, Curiosity had traveled 20.16 kilometers on Mars β an average of 9 meters per day since it began its journey on Mars in August 2012.
executing a task is extremely difficult when dealing with a rover 55 to 400 million kilometers away, depending upon the relative positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits. If the Earth-based Curiosity team issues the wrong commands to the rover, it could jeopardize or even end the mission. Hence, they have to move slowly and verify every step. That means that something a human could accomplish in a couple of hours β like taking multiple rock samples β make take a robot weeks.
During Apollo 17 the astronauts collected 741 rock and soil samples, including a deep-drill core sample 3 meters long. This amounts to 247 samples each day. I had some difficulty finding the equivalent information for Curiosity. What I did discover was that as of Jan. 15, 2019, Curiosity had drilled 19 sites and had taken two samples without drilling. So Curiosity has taken at most 30 soil samples while on Mars. That is, on average, 0.013 soil samples per day β which shows how difficult it is to operate a piece of machinery remotely. When equipment such as a drill malfunctions, which it has on Curiosity, there is nobody there to repair it. So the team must find workarounds to the problems for them to continue to get science.
In 2015 dollars, each of the seven lunar Apollo missions cost about US$20 billion. The cost of Curiosity was about $2.5 billion in 2015.
Yes, I am comparing a lunar mission to a Mars mission, which isnβt exactly fair.
If we assume $500 billion per mission β a figure that would hopefully decrease with multiple missions β then a manned mission would yield a better return on the investment. From the ballpark estimates above, we can say a crew of four would be at least 500 times more productive in performing science than a rover, although the cost would be about 200 times greater.
I'd LOVE to see you have a DEBATE with this guy !!!
π
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
Here's another argument for unmanned probes. Anyone else remember the Viking missions in 1976? Cost about a billion dollars. Part of the mission was a rudimentary test for the presence of life. Now, it was obvious that the real accomplishment was not the test itself but developing the ability to do experiments remotely. It wasn't much of a surprise when the test failed to detect life, and of course it didn't mean there was no life on Mars, just that the test had not found life at that spot.
But that's not how the public saw it. "That's it? You didn't know before, and you still don't know, but if we give you another billion you'll be happy to try again?" From a political perspective, those wishing for a second manned Mars mission had better have a few science "aces in the hole" they know can be delivered with the first mission.
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
Found this link -- which indicates it may have possibly contaminated MARS -- which also means the life that we find on it one day could be from our own planet. And it also says they discovered that TIME PASSES more SLOWLY there on MARS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_1
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft (along with Viking 2) sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program,[2] landing on July 20, 1976. It was the first successful Mars lander in history. (The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars was the Soviet Union's Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, which stopped transmitting after 14.5 seconds.) Viking 1 was operational on Mars for 2245 sols (2307 days; 6 years, 116 days). Viking 1 held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of 2307 days (over 6β1β4 years)[2] or 2245 Martian solar days,[2] until that record was broken by the Opportunity rover on May 19, 2010.[6]
On August 7, 1980, Viking 1 Orbiter was running low on attitude control gas and its orbit was raised from 357 Γ 33943 km to 320 Γ 56000 km to prevent impact with Mars and possible contamination until the year 2019. Operations were terminated on August 17, 1980, after 1485 orbits. A 2009 analysis concluded that, while the possibility that Viking 1 had impacted Mars could not be ruled out, it was most likely still in orbit.[16] More than 57,000 images were sent back to Earth.
In 2006 the Viking 1 lander was imaged on the Martian surface by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.[22]
Viking 1 carried a biology experiment whose purpose was to look for evidence of life. The Viking spacecraft biological experiments weighed 15.5 kg (34 lbs) and consisted of three subsystems: the pyrolytic release experiment (PR), the labeled release experiment (LR), and the gas exchange experiment (GEX). In addition, independent of the biology experiments, Viking carried a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS) that could measure the composition and abundance of organic compounds in the Martian soil.[23] The results were surprising and interesting: the GCMS gave a negative; the PR gave a negative result, the GEX gave a negative result, and the LR gave a positive result.[24] Viking scientist Patricia Straat stated in 2009, "Our (LR) experiment was a definite positive response for life, but a lot of people have claimed that it was a false positive
Gravitational time dilation is a phenomenon predicted by the theory of General Relativity whereby time passes more slowly in regions of lower gravitational potential. Scientists used the lander to test this hypothesis, by sending radio signals to the lander on Mars, and instructing the lander to send back signals, in cases which sometimes included the signal passing close to the Sun. Scientists found that the observed Shapiro delays of the signals matched the predictions of General Relativity.[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation
The lower the gravitational potential (the closer the clock is to the source of gravitation), the slower time passes, speeding up as the gravitational potential increases (the clock getting away from the source of gravitation)
Earth's core is effectively 2.5 years younger than its surface.[2]
Clocks that are far from massive bodies (or at higher gravitational potentials) run more quickly, and clocks close to massive bodies (or at lower gravitational potentials) run more slowly
This is for anyone who SPEAKS CALCULUS:
Gravitational time dilation {\displaystyle T}T in a gravitational well is equal to the velocity time dilation for a speed that is needed to escape that gravitational well (given that the metric is of the form {\displaystyle g=(dt/T(x))^{2}-g_{space}}{\displaystyle g=(dt/T(x))^{2}-g_{space}}, i. e. it is time invariant and there are no "movement" terms {\displaystyle dxdt}{\displaystyle dxdt}).
Apparently the GIST of it is that
we'd be YOUNGER if we LIVED there on MARS than we are here on EARTH (because EARTH is larger than Mars and it's surface is located farther away from it's core). So maybe they could recruit people for a MARS MISSION that way by advertising how they could (in theory at least) live longer there on MARS??? That still wouldn't get me to go though.
π
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
Calculus isn't necessary. The formula for escape velocity is:
V(escape) = sqrt(2GM/r)
where,
G = the gravitational constant, approximately 6.674Γ10^β11 m^3β
kg^β1β
s^β2.
M = the mass of the attracting body, in Earth's case, approximately 5.9722x10^24 kg.
r = radius from the center of the attracting body, 6371 km at Earth's surface.
So, at Earth's surface, escape velocity is 11186 m/s.
Now, plug that into the formula for velocity time dilation in special relativity:
T = sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)
where:
v = the velocity of the traveler, here 11186 m/s as a proxy for gravity.
c = the velocity of light, 299792 km/s.
And so, for someone standing on Earth's surface, T ~= 0.99998. We experience one second less out of every 50,000 than someone out in space, away from gravity would. But that's not really accurate because it neglects the effect of Earth's rotation.
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
That's nice that you can speak that Calculus looking language (with all the numbers and letters all mixed up together), but that ONE SECOND still isn't going to get me to go LIVE there on MARS where I could be ONE SECOND or so younger.
π
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
I screwed up the math there. I did that with a calculator, but when I did it with a spreadsheet where I could verify intermediate results, I got:
T = 1 - 6.96 * 10^-10
That agrees with some online sources like this: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Relativ/gratim.html
Mars's equatorial radius is 3396.2 km, and its mass is 6.4171x10^23 kg. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
So, escape velocity is 5022 m/s, and T ~= 1 - 1.14 * 10^-10
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
Thanks for the correction.
I always SCREW UP MATH when I try to use it too (which is also why we've never gotten along very well -- because spending LOTS of time trying to work out a math problem -- only to get it WRONG because you put the decimal point in the wrong place or something -- is also enough to drive a person out of their mind).
π€ͺ
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
It's not much of an effect. One second every 46 years for Earth; one second every 226 years for Mars. I don't think the colonists will notice it. Still, that effect is large enough that it has to be programmed into the GPS, else the system would go out of whack pretty quickly. Wild, huh?
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
I don't think the colonists will notice it
No probably not, but Data from STAR TREK:NG would probably have noticed it. Remember how he'd go on with his replies for several decimal points, and then the crew would have to stop him from being so precise???
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
LOL Now I'm picturing Brent Spiner gravely informing me that I'm one and a quarter seconds younger than I'm supposed to be.
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
He'd probably also go into PLANCK TIME if you didn't stop him.
π
Have you seen him in STAR TREK: PICARD???
He plays the part of the son of the man that created DATA (and he also looks just like Data).
And he also gave PICARD a GOLUM BODY to use that he'd made for himself, because PICARD also died and then they download his consciousness into that ARTIFICIAL GOLUM body (which also looks just like PICARD).
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
Naah, I got burned out on Star Trek a long time ago. TNG was the last series I watched with any regularity.
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
Data also had 2 daughters (identical twins) that were created by the guy who wanted to DISECT DATA in TNG. Only they're ORGANIC and not MECHANICAL like DATA.
Anyhow, Brent's a HUMAN character now, and Picard may not be (depending upon how you chose to view what's happened to him), so it's also kind of like the 2 characters have switched places now.
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BullSchmidt (3189)
4 years ago
Thanks for the info, but really -- not my thing. :)
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joi2049 (5630)
4 years ago
But it gets even more SURREAL when the CONSCIOUSNESS of PICARD meets the CONSCIOUSNESS of DATA -- who also requests that PICARD kill him -- so that he can also achieve his wish to be fully human. And then after the CONSCIOUSNESS of PICARD is downloaded into the ARTIFICIAL GOLUM body, the first thing the NEW PICARD (who also still looks as old as he was before) does is pull out these things from a machine that look a bit like those other things that you see BOWMAN pulling out of HAL 9000 when he KILLS him in the 2001 film.
So it was also a David LYNCHIAN kind of a Sci Fi scene that takes place (if you know what I mean).
And NAT GEO also had another interesting program about MARS -- where an EARTHLING in a MARS COLONY also hallucinates -- and thinks he's still back on Earth when he opens up a door (that he also assumes was his front door back on EARTH) -- and then he also dies as a result of that -- and also almost kills all the rest of the other inhabitants of the colony (who were also able to close the other AIR LOCK doors before that happened).
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