We should be sending robots to Mars. In 2008.

So now we're finally seeing people talk about getting humans to Mars.

I think that's just jim-dandy.

What I can't understand is why we aren't prepping a robot mission right now. Today. We know plenty of ways already to get something in the way of supplies there and we know how to send robots that would, at the least, dig a shelter, start collecting water, and purify a few thousand liters of oxygen and other useful raw materials. Or to be still more modest, we could send a few tiny surveying robots. Tiny, slow moving, solar powered beasties sending their data to a booster for retransmission to Earth but designed to work for months at the least, puttering along collecting information.

Seems to me like we should just bloody well choose a promising landing spot, choose something we can build with today's technology, and get some kind of payload on the way in, say, the next six months. And then keep sending them. Every. Six. Months. Or more frequently as we figure out what we're doing and/or round up more funding. Worst case scenario, the human mission will land at another site, in which case they'll still have supplies a hell of a lot closer than earth.

And let's keep in mind that small missions like this would actually work better if they were private. Which seems far smarter to me anyway. Then perhaps they can they bill NASA for supplies when the NASA mission finally shows up.

But the longer we wait to start, the longer it will take to get this going. Doesn't it make more sense to start with one robot crew to work as explained above, another to do more of the same and build a clear, airtight enclosure and make growing medium, and then the third to turn the first enclosure into a high-density greenhouse, (or two or three separated ones with different flora) all started from seed? If it also devotes some effort to purifying fuel, well, that would be great, too.

Plenty of people are working on the technologies and enough are ready now. No, they're not "just right", but right now is much better than just right afaic. We need to get our butts in gear and get some useful materials on the way NOW.

Yes, I am well aware of the limitations of current robots. I was trying to build little automated rotation points back when Reagan was president. But we still have plenty of devices that can run for years if done right. Think of it as a codesign between the Long Now folks and Rodney Brooks' lab. Maybe this means two really tough robots; maybe it means a hundred ones the size of your thumb, of which half will "die" within six months. But one way or another, it means that while we sit around here on earth planning the human mission, work is already underway to make Mars a more habitable place.

Let's ask ask some questions.
1- how small a payload could be of use? Two kilos? Five? A solar panel hooked up to a simple but slow crude ore digger and refiner? And when it's done you've got the metal to reuse. Keep in mind, no communications with earth beyond a once a month ping.
2 - how large a rocket would it take to get that on the way on the most "thrifty" trajectory?
3 - How much would that cost to buy at surplus? say, an old ICBM? And to refit?
4 - What fraction of a decimal place is this amount compared to the cost of sending THE SAME MASS IN A HUMAN OPTIMIZED VEHICLE?

Sorry about "yelling", but my point is that even if the frickin' thing doesn't work worth a damn, it's still cheaper, kilo for kilo, than waiting and shipping the same mass along with the human mission. Not to mention the things we learn simply from increasing the number of iterations we accumulate of getting stuff to Mars at all. There is no down side.

Seems to me like a perfect project for an ambitious and underrespected college engineering program partnered with a corporation looking to burnish their public image. Admittedly, any mission launched in 2008 would have to be almost literally off-the shelf. Probably a very low tech surveyor that will have to wait for the next mission to get its booster. Or even just a "dumb" box of supplies such as ruggedized solar panels. But I'll betcha that if we launch something in December 2008, something much better will be ready by June of 2009.

So, anybody know a good candidate?

'Cause you know that I'm going to talk to folks at my local engineering school and, hell, I know they're looking for ways to get publicity anyway.

-Rustin

Comments

[Eclipse Now]

I'm with you all the way. I've read Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy and dreamt of settling Mars most of my life. It was a major part of my online hobby until about 4 years ago.

Then I found out that the world was going to 'start' running out of oil round about now.

I still dream about Mars and space generally, but just wonder how we are going to afford it as the world economy is bankrupted for the next decade or so by peak oil. 3 years ago, after a year of research, I formed a team and we briefed the NSW Government on the coming oil crisis. Oil was still at $60 a barrel then. Those were the days!

How are we going to afford the space program when the US government has wasted a gazzillion dollars in Iraq instead of weaning America off oil by a massive solar-thermal program and train and tram upgrade? There's NO easy alternative to oil. NO alternative satisfies the SERVICE checklist I've developed.

However, I still dream of the moon and Mars. Getting a base on the moon for constructing massive geosync solar sats microwaving power down to the earth might even help peak oil, as I wrote today. But I doubt it... it's all just too expensive. A moon base would probably be economically viable in the long term, especially if space-solar became the main energy source for the world.... but who's going to make that decision? It would require economies of scale so vast that I cannot conceive of one corporation being allowed to run it... it would have to be a united international government effort, and we just don't have that kind of political unity yet.

I hope the final oil crisis compels a grand international vision of a moonbased solar industry, but the most likely outcome is international tension and war.

[Rustin Wright]

I'm not sweating the viability of the cost of getting out into space. The return on investment we've reliably seen from extending our reach beyond earth's surface has been damned impressive. What will we get from going to the moon and Mars? We don't know yet. Though, at the least, the push it will give to robot design will reap huge dividends.

As for who pays, I don't think that we need to have ONE entity pay for it at all. Looks to me like we're already seeing a rampup to something far more like the settling of the American west, with massive government subsidies supporting tens of thousands of private ventures. Will the scale of corruption be just as grotesque as it was in the settling of the west? Probably. But the work will get done anyway. Many people will probably die. More will be ruined. But it will happen. The questions now are when and how.

I certainly understand your concerns re the SERVICE checklist but I suspect that we'll continue in coming years to see more and more of our productive capacity come on line to deal with this properly while also seeing some pretty painless usage transitions (new forms of lighting, new approaches to refrigeration, swiftly implemented mass transit) that will not only cut way down on per capita energy consumption in developed countries, but are being implemented in parallel with increases in consumption among those populations just now becoming developed. Say what you will about China, when they make a decision about infrastructure, it get DONE and they're getting serious fast about things like photovoltaics.

Pollution terrifies me. Massive increases in prices for trace minerals keeps me up at night. War over water supplies is starting already. But energy? Naw; we'll manage.

Will we see lots of pissing and moaning about people having to change their habits? Yes. Will those habits change anyway? Also yes.

I dunno; I think that my experiences of having seen quite a lot of the more aggressive implementations of more ecologically responsible/less energy dependent means of living in the late seventies makes me more sanguine than most in the ecological community. I watched beautiful houses, stores, etc. being built in the Berkeley Heights, in Rutland, Vermont, in poor neighborhoods of NYC, that worked just fine and were joyful places to be. And then, in the mid and late nineties, I saw what could be done with squats on a tiny budget and was delighted again. I *know* how beautiful, practical, and cheap such ways of living are. And things like my visits to the Urban Ecology Center and Growing Power in Milwaukee a few weeks ago bolster my conclusion that more advanced iterations of such approaches are growing in popularity at an accelerating rate right now, this time with sincere government support. (On the municipal and state level, at least.)

Anyway, this has been a long response. I should probably rewrite it as a blog entry. But, in short, as the son of an environmental scientist, as somebody who *has* done his own prototyping and talked with and looked into a lot of the approaches being done now, I simply don't think that the "peak oil" phenomenon is going to be anything like the steep dropoff in supply and consequential social disaster that it is being made out to be. I strongly suspect that we'll have plenty of algae stacks and lightrail systems and greenroof in place in ten years or so to be addressing things just fine.