Author Topic: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon  (Read 23785 times)

Offline guckyfan

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #60 on: 06/20/2016 05:51 pm »
As for Planetary protection, Human risk mitigation, etc., I think the best way to discern how Mars and Humans will interact is for Humans and Mars to interact and plan accordingly knowing you're not going to know what you don't know...but with humans on the surface, you'll find out soon enough.

For backward protection of earth this is the obvious solution. Send people and equipment. If there is anything deadly lurking they will die. The risk is way low, low enough to expose a group of people even if not considered low enough to risk all of earth. Two years on Mars are enough. Or even a few weeks with 8 months return flight duration.

The forward contamination is simply not existing. Not in the sense there is a risk of exterminating local life before we can find it.

Offline robertinventor

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #61 on: 06/20/2016 07:35 pm »
For backward protection of earth this is the obvious solution. Send people and equipment. If there is anything deadly lurking they will die. The risk is way low, low enough to expose a group of people even if not considered low enough to risk all of earth. Two years on Mars are enough. Or even a few weeks with 8 months return flight duration.

The forward contamination is simply not existing. Not in the sense there is a risk of exterminating local life before we can find it.

Okay in the forward direction, here is an example which I think helps to understand the issue. It's possible that life on Mars never evolved very far, because it only had oceans for a few hundred million years and then only sporadically flooded after that and for most of its past, the best sites for life, if they exist, are probably marginally habitable similar to Antarctic dry valleys. If that's the case, what we find there might be an early form of life, e.g. RNA based life, that on Earth was out evolved by DNA based life. In that case, it would be very vulnerable to Earth microbes. The putative microbes in ALH84001 are so small, some of them, that if they are really life, they can't have all the apparatus of a modern DNA based cell. There are many other such scenarios where Mars life could be vulnerable but that's the clearest I think.

(Note you can also use the same argument to suggest it may have evolved multicellular life early on. We just don't know what leads to rapid evolution and what leads to slow evolution and you get both suggested for Mars).

In the backwards direction, quarantine is just a very tricky thing, no matter how you do it, and what you are suggesting is a form of quarantine.

If humans got critically ill on Mars, life in danger, and it was due to native life there, or especially if nobody was sure what the cause was, it would still probably be unethical to just leave them to die. They would want to return to Earth, to save their lives, almost certainly. How could we turn them back? Even if they volunteered to die there in such a case in advance, not at all clear you can hold them to that legally or ethically. That's another issue with any form of quarantine. If this is true, then quarantine is just symbolic, because if anything goes wrong, you'll breach quarantine to save the humans, so it achieves nothing.

Then, no form of quarantine can show that Mars life is safe for Earth, no matter how long it takes. Again a good example to use here I think is the possibility of a lifeform on Mars that's better at photosynthesis, or all round better at metabolizing than Earth life. It might not matter on Mars, and would be harmless to humans there, but it could be a disaster for Earth if returned, and, say, took over from the green algae in the oceans but produced chemicals poisonous to Earth life or was just inedible by Earth life, and maybe didn't produce oxygen either (long term effect). Again you can think of many other such scenarios. For instance life adapted to Mars may need to adapt to Earth conditions first before it becomes a nuisance, evolve a way to survive at warmer temperatures, and higher atmospheric pressures, and in the presence of fresh water. It might be able to do that quite quickly if some time in the past it had that capability on Mars, but still might not do that right away.

I think there is no substitute for knowing what is there. Then you can figure out what precautions are needed, and what future possibilities there are. Yes, the risk may be very low. We just don't know. I think if you asked a bunch of astrobiologists they would say the risk is probably very low, but they won't be willing to give a figure for it as a percentage. At any rate, do you agree that right now it's best to return the sample unsterilized samples to above GEO? I think that we may get a sample return, some time in the 2030s. Possibly earlier with Red Dragon, as this thread suggests. So the thing to be sorted out first is how to do that in the safest possible way, and then, least cost within requirements for safety. I think telerobotic preliminary study in GEO achieves both of those..
« Last Edit: 06/20/2016 08:12 pm by robertinventor »

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #62 on: 06/20/2016 07:37 pm »
If humans were killed by local life on Mars, we'd definitely need another mission there.

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Offline rcoppola

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #63 on: 06/20/2016 08:39 pm »
I'll be honest and borderline cavalier.

If anyone got sick on Mars because of some form of domestic "infection" then that's part of the risk. No more, no less of any other critical infrastructure failure or accident. Also, we'd learn a lot by treating it there as we'd need to learn it anyways. So Earth contamination is a non-starter for that. IMO. I assume a this point in the process we have built up enough of bio lab presence for both research and are health. And wen an just as well put all the minds on Earth against the problem as well. And hopefully if there was time, send additional supplies accordingly.

And if by chance there is some form of basic microbial or "lesser than" life on Mars that we encounter and subsequently annihilate, I would hope we were able to obtain samples before such an event occurred. However I do not think any such event would or should preclude us from continuing exploration and colonization. Be careful, stay alert, 'try" to do no harm. But go we should and when there, continue on we must. IMO.
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Offline robertinventor

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #64 on: 06/20/2016 10:30 pm »
I'll be honest and borderline cavalier.

If anyone got sick on Mars because of some form of domestic "infection" then that's part of the risk. No more, no less of any other critical infrastructure failure or accident. Also, we'd learn a lot by treating it there as we'd need to learn it anyways. So Earth contamination is a non-starter for that. IMO. I assume a this point in the process we have built up enough of bio lab presence for both research and are health. And wen an just as well put all the minds on Earth against the problem as well. And hopefully if there was time, send additional supplies accordingly.

And if by chance there is some form of basic microbial or "lesser than" life on Mars that we encounter and subsequently annihilate, I would hope we were able to obtain samples before such an event occurred. However I do not think any such event would or should preclude us from continuing exploration and colonization. Be careful, stay alert, 'try" to do no harm. But go we should and when there, continue on we must. IMO.

Why assume that there is enough bio lab presence there to study and treat in situ? That seems a very advanced stage like decades into the future. And - to make it entirely one way, from Earth to Mars, nothing ever comes back?

With the early life, I can understand that for people who are focused on sending humans to Mars as their priority, that finding some early form of life there may seem unimportant. But for others, with interest in biology or astrobiology, that's the main thing that could be interesting about Mars. The main thing is that it closes off possible futures on Mars. Not just for the humans who go there, but for all of humanity for all future time, as well as all future civilizations that arise on Earth. None of them will ever have this opportunity of studying this unusual early form of life, or whatever there is on Mars. Evolution is a great mystery in biology, we only have half of the history - there must have been as many steps of evolution between the first non living complex chemicals and the earliest lifeforms we know of as there are between them and us. But we know nothing about it with lots of speculation.

Mars could, if we treat it right, be like another exoplanet with micromartians, actually genuine microbial ETs in our own solar system. The nearest such might be light years away or even further if we lose the opportunity for Mars. Why such a great hurry? Mars will still be there a decade later, or a century later, why not take our time and do things properly? And meanwhile we can send humans to the Moon, to asteroids, to the moons of Mars, to Venus, Mercury, Jupiter's moons, why in such a rush to send them to the one place in the inner solar system that's most vulnerable to our microbes.

That's how I see it. Just some things that you might be interested to think about.
« Last Edit: 06/20/2016 10:36 pm by robertinventor »

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #65 on: 06/20/2016 10:43 pm »
Why assume that there is enough bio lab presence there to study and treat in situ? That seems a very advanced stage like decades into the future. And - to make it entirely one way, from Earth to Mars, nothing ever comes back?

A sophisticated biology lab, with wide range of culturing, microscopy(diverse optical microscopy, plus SEM), PCR, gas chromatography, mass spectroscopy, and the rest, plus all sample handling and preparation, could be supplied by under a tonne of equipment.  Quite reasonable for the first mission, whenever that is.

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Mars could, if we treat it right, be like another exoplanet with micromartians, actually genuine microbial ETs in our own solar system. The nearest such might be light years away or even further if we lose the opportunity for Mars. Why such a great hurry? Mars will still be there a decade later, or a century later, why not take our time and do things properly? And meanwhile we can send humans to the Moon, to asteroids, to the moons of Mars, to Venus, Mercury, Jupiter's moons, why in such a rush to send them to the one place in the inner solar system that's most vulnerable to our microbes.

Because most astrobiologists I know (actually all of them) would like to see work that can be done in their lifetime done in their lifetime, not put off for nebulous reasons into the indefinite future.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #66 on: 06/20/2016 11:05 pm »
Because most astrobiologists I know (actually all of them) would like to see work that can be done in their lifetime done in their lifetime, not put off for nebulous reasons into the indefinite future.
Even if that work destroys the subject matter of astrobiology on Mars so that from then on you can only work with past life rather than present day life there? Chris McKay for one talked about biologically reversible exploration of Mars. He has the idea that if we find micromartians there, that we should reverse our contamination of Mars, and then try to make Mars more suitable for the micromartians because they would be so unique and interesting. He may have changed his position since then but he used to talk about that quite passionately.

We can do in situ studies from Earth or with humans in orbit around Mars. Humans in orbit can explore multiple sites at the same time, with the HERRO studies then they get as much work done as three teams on the surface - and that's from several years ago now. Drilling is best done robotically - humans in spacesuits are not good at drilling, especially in a vacuum, as we found on the Moon. Robotic moles can drill to many kilometers of depth in principle. Exploring from orbit seems likely to increase the pace of discovery - and as for sample return - I don't think the caching version of Curiosity has enough of a chance of caching either past or present life to be worth doing for the expense of the mission. But it would be a technology demo and later on when other rovers do find life on Mars, if they do, it could be returned to a safe facility above GEO or if we know enough about it to be sure itis safe to do, to Earth itself. Or perhaps best of all, returned to a facility in orbit around Mars, which gives the minimum amount of disruption as you could get it there within a few days of collecting the sample from Mars if you needed to. That's another advantage - humans on the surface would not be permitted to go up to a site of special interest anyway - so why not have them in orbit and remove any risk of irreversibly introducing Earth life to Mars?

I hope you don't mind me putting my perspective here. I know that in the past I got some members here upset by saying these things, and so I'm treading very carefully. If there is any sign that anyone finds what I say upsetting I'll stop right away! I missed the signs last time, mainly I think because I come from an argumentative family where we rather relish a heated argumentative ding dong which is done with kindly intent.


« Last Edit: 06/20/2016 11:32 pm by robertinventor »

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #67 on: 06/21/2016 12:18 am »
The problem with the proposal to establish that Mars is lifeless before sending humans is the length of time this is likely to take! The surface area of Mars is given as 144.8 trillion m^2. To accomplish the task within a millennium requires ruling out life at a rate of more than 400 million m^2 per day! Who's going to be interested in sustaining such an effort over such a long period of time? Nobody, that's who. And that's before we come to the question of who's going to pay for it!

Requiring the absence of life on Mars to be proven before sending humans is, in practice, a prohibition of ever sending humans to Mars. Those who would prioritise human exploration and colonisation will not be prepared to wait, and IMO are likely to have by far the greater political clout. The most that will be done are strategies to minimise the risk of contamination and maximise the ability to discriminate between Martian and Earth organisms.

But fundamentally, the best chance of finding and characterising Martian life is to send humans to do it!

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #68 on: 06/21/2016 12:45 am »
Because most astrobiologists I know (actually all of them) would like to see work that can be done in their lifetime done in their lifetime, not put off for nebulous reasons into the indefinite future.
Even if that work destroys the subject matter of astrobiology on Mars so that from then on you can only work with past life rather than present day life there? Chris McKay for one talked about biologically reversible exploration of Mars. He has the idea that if we find micromartians there, that we should reverse our contamination of Mars, and then try to make Mars more suitable for the micromartians because they would be so unique and interesting. He may have changed his position since then but he used to talk about that quite passionately.

Biologivcally reversible exploration is an interesting concept that needs to be explored.  However, Chris McKay, whom I know and have worked in on several occasions is also a strong supporter of crewed missions to Mars and always has been.

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We can do in situ studies from Earth or with humans in orbit around Mars. Humans in orbit can explore multiple sites at the same time, with the HERRO studies then they get as much work done as three teams on the surface - and that's from several years ago now. Drilling is best done robotically - humans in spacesuits are not good at drilling, especially in a vacuum, as we found on the Moon. Robotic moles can drill to many kilometers of depth in principle.

I think the above is both unrealistic and wrong.

The HERRO study was deeply flawed in many ways, from starting assumptions to analyses to conclusions.  A teleoperated mission will not deliver as much as three crewed missions to the surface.  There may or may not be a place for a teleoperated precursor missions before people land on Mars.  the more I look at it, the more of a false step it would be.

Drilling is not best done robotically.  I have worked with fully autonomous drills, and they are slow and failure prone.  Drilling on the Moon during Apollo was a success.  Robotic moles that can drill to many kilometers of depth exist neither in fact nor in principle, they are only science fiction.  Teleoperated drilling to shallow depths is already used in marine survey work, as is shallow drilling with automated but human supervised rigs in the mining industry.  But both have humans on hand to deal with problems which happen requently in any drilling.

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Exploring from orbit seems likely to increase the pace of discovery

Improvements are likely to be limited.  Elimination of latency might result in a factor of ten improvement in work flow over present automated systems, currently limited two being commanded once a day , based on Lunokhod experience. Any more than that and there are power supply problems. Even if these were surmounted with systems using stored power resupplied by power collection facilities, there will still be  problems with the limited number of sciences that can be investigated.  In even comparable disciplines, crews on the surface will out perform any autonomous systems in the results of work achieved by three or four orders of magnitude and teleoperated systems by two or three orders.  Not counting the studies only possible with people on the ground.



Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #69 on: 06/21/2016 02:25 am »
The problem with the proposal to establish that Mars is lifeless before sending humans is the length of time this is likely to take! The surface area of Mars is given as 144.8 trillion m^2. To accomplish the task within a millennium requires ruling out life at a rate of more than 400 million m^2 per day! Who's going to be interested in sustaining such an effort over such a long period of time? Nobody, that's who. And that's before we come to the question of who's going to pay for it!

Requiring the absence of life on Mars to be proven before sending humans is, in practice, a prohibition of ever sending humans to Mars. Those who would prioritise human exploration and colonisation will not be prepared to wait, and IMO are likely to have by far the greater political clout. The most that will be done are strategies to minimise the risk of contamination and maximise the ability to discriminate between Martian and Earth organisms.

But fundamentally, the best chance of finding and characterising Martian life is to send humans to do it!

Oh, I'm not suggesting that. I think a realistic number of precursor missions for a reasonably complete biological survey of Mars would be 54, and 30 orbiters devoted to the search for life on Mars. That's pretty much a number from a hat, but it's Carl Sagan's estimate, a number he used in one of his calculations. I think it's a reasonable ballpark figure in absence of any other estimates.

We have had two so far, the two Viking missions. ExoMars I think will count and possibly the trace gas orbiter for one of the orbiter missions. We'd need to increase the pace a lot to do that. But if you combined it with a human mission to Mars orbit you'd get a lot more funding and could  probably send many rovers along with it. Especially if you can miniaturize them. Or else indeed miniaturization and reduced costs to get into space may make it practical to do it in a reasonable time, say 20 years. At the current pace of missions it would take 52 years probably.

Of course if we discover life early on, then we'll know that there is Mars life at least and may know some of its capabilities. E.g. if we find RNA based life on Mars we'll then know that the Mars life is very vulnerable to Earth life. If we find photosynthetic life with a new form of photosynthesis never explored on Earth - or some life based on XNA with a smaller more efficient cell, we'll know that Earth could potentially be vulnerable to Mars life.

If Mars is sterile that may take a long time to prove. As you say you'd never have certainty but it might take all of those 54 + 30 missions to be reasonably sure - especially with all the indications of possible habitats there that we have from Phoenix, Curiosity, the orbiter photographs etc.

And - the best outcome in a way for those who want to send humans there is to find out that it is not only sterile, but there are no habitats for life there either, making it similar to the Moon in terms of habitability. As a sci fi. geek I can see the appeal of that.

But as someone keen on astrobiology, I'd prefer the future where there is some interesting exobiology on Mars even though that would make it harder to send humans there. If there are habitats for Earth life there but no life at all, that is a very interesting situation as it could tell us a lot about terrestrial planets that don't have life on them, which may be the most common planet in our galaxy - and it may be the only opportunity we have, within light years, to study such a planet close up. So again I think that's a situation where we should go slow and not introduce Earth life to Mars. There are plenty of other places to do experiments with creating habitats, ISRU, building larger and larger self sustaining ecosystems in the huge lava tube caves on the Moon, or Stanford Torus type habitats etc. or indeed in orbit around Mars using materials from Deimos (after studying Deimos scientifically and depending what we find out about it). There are many other exciting and dangerous missions for humans. No need to prioritize Mars, seems to me.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2016 02:29 am by robertinventor »

Offline robertinventor

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #70 on: 06/21/2016 03:11 am »
Biologivcally reversible exploration is an interesting concept that needs to be explored.  However, Chris McKay, whom I know and have worked in on several occasions is also a strong supporter of crewed missions to Mars and always has been.
I know that also. What happens if those two enthusiasms he has collides though, and you can't do a biologically reversible mission with humans on the surface, and you find some vulnerable Mars life form there?

I don't know what would happen in that case.
I think the above is both unrealistic and wrong.

The HERRO study was deeply flawed in many ways, from starting assumptions to analyses to conclusions.  A teleoperated mission will not deliver as much as three crewed missions to the surface.  There may or may not be a place for a teleoperated precursor missions before people land on Mars.  the more I look at it, the more of a false step it would be.

Drilling is not best done robotically.  I have worked with fully autonomous drills, and they are slow and failure prone.  Drilling on the Moon during Apollo was a success.  Robotic moles that can drill to many kilometers of depth exist neither in fact nor in principle, they are only science fiction.  Teleoperated drilling to shallow depths is already used in marine survey work, as is shallow drilling with automated but human supervised rigs in the mining industry.  But both have humans on hand to deal with problems which happen requently in any drilling.

Okay - but the HERRO study is the only comparison study I know of to compare telerobotic exploration with exploration using crew on the ground. If it is deeply flawed, someone else should do a new improved study - it's out of date anyway and needs to be updated.

Drilling on the Moon during Apollo did work but they had a fair bit of difficulty doing their two meter drills, with the astronauts sometimes falling over and so on as they attempted to do the drill by hand.

We haven't really had experience in robotic moles on Mars yet but the designers think it will work. Conditions rather different from Earth with the regolith gardened by small meteorite impacts to considerable depth - most of the ideas involve percussive self hammering moles. ExoMars will have a drill able to drill to 2 meters and the Insight Lander, a drill to go down 5 meters. Insight uses a self hammering mole from DLR. Details.

Ten meters at least isn't much of an advance over those, and that's deep enough to get beyond any effects of surface cosmic radiation. There are drills designed on paper to go down kilometers. Without water, any drilling there is different from Earth experiences. And with those Earth examples the people who do the repairs don't have to use spacesuits. If it's deep under the sea, I think they often use robotic submersibles?

In any case if that's the price to pay to keep Mars free of Earth's microbes, that's how you have to do it, but you haven't convinced me that it's easier to send humans to the surface yet, if you ignore planetary protection issues.

Improvements are likely to be limited.  Elimination of latency might result in a factor of ten improvement in work flow over present automated systems, currently limited two being commanded once a day , based on Lunokhod experience. Any more than that and there are power supply problems. Even if these were surmounted with systems using stored power resupplied by power collection facilities, there will still be  problems with the limited number of sciences that can be investigated.  In even comparable disciplines, crews on the surface will out perform any autonomous systems in the results of work achieved by three or four orders of magnitude and teleoperated systems by two or three orders.  Not counting the studies only possible with people on the ground.

Okay on power requirements - remember that humans on the surface would need far more by way of power than robots, and in addition, would need oxygen, food etc, somehow sorted out. Why not use the same method, e.g. generating fuel in situ, to power the rovers?

Also you could use batteries and solar power. The lunar rover had a range of 35.9 km and weight of 210 kg. That can be improved on surely. So it's certainly feasible to send a battery operated rover to Mars with a range of over 30 km just from the battery power alone. Then you could also use the Mars One idea of spreading thin film panels over the surface to repower it - have a charging point which you set up to recharge the battery. Meanwhile it continues slowly as our current Opportunity does, just using its own solar panels until the batteries are recharged.

The pace of discovery would increase hugely - at present teams on Earth communicate with Mars once a day. Even if they could communicate once an hour, that would speed many things up 24 fold. In a month you could do as much as we currently do in two years. So broadband communications with Mars, one of the first things you'd do before a human mission there, would increase the pace of discovery hugely. You could also use simulated real time, a way of eliminating much of the latency issues even operated from Earth. With humans on the spot to do the most challenging teleoperating from orbit.

I don't understand what you mean by "limited number of sciences" in this context - doesn't it depend on what instruments you send to the surface, whether humans or telerobots or robots operated from Earth?

A telerobotic rover on the ground is likely to be able to do much the same things a human in a spacesuit can do, given that a human in a spacesuit is quite clumsy, if the rover has binocular vision and haptic feedback. Give it hands and general purpose tools and it doesn't need to be limited in what it can do. Especially bear in mind that telerobotics will continue to improve. Also humans can operate many rovers on the surface and while they are controlling another, the first one can continue with more routine tasks, a bit like a game of civilization.

I think many of the ideas from 3D VR games and technology will get incorporated into our future space missions. After all they have had orders of magnitude more developer time than space mission software and have lead to many useful innovations.

I think actually that we may get practical experience of telerobotics in space with lunar missions in the near future. When that happens I think we'll find that machines are far more capable than they were in the days of lunakhod, operated from Earth most of the time, semi-autonomous, route finding on their own, able to do many things just by themselves with occasional help from Earth. And that's how I would envision telerobotic exploration of Mars proceeding - operated remotely from Earth, or semi-autonomous, doing a lot of their own driving from place to place and then the crew in orbit around Mars step in to control robots that need particular help. In a situation like that I think that it would be much more than a 3 to 1 ratio compared with them working directly on the surface in spacesuits. They'd also have colour corrected vision, white balanced. And everythign they saw would be streamed back to Earth in HD meaning that after an asronaut has just walked past a place and maybe glanced at a rock via telerobotics, amateurs and experts back on Earth can explore that footage with the same direct telepresence, binocular vision etc experience, and maybe alert them to something they missed. I think a proper comparison study has to take all of this into account.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2016 03:23 am by robertinventor »

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #71 on: 06/21/2016 06:23 am »
Biologivcally reversible exploration is an interesting concept that needs to be explored.  However, Chris McKay, whom I know and have worked in on several occasions is also a strong supporter of crewed missions to Mars and always has been.
I know that also. What happens if those two enthusiasms he has collides though, and you can't do a biologically reversible mission with humans on the surface, and you find some vulnerable Mars life form there?

That's special pleading.  There is no evidence that there is life on the surface, we know that the surface is very hostile to terrestrial life and probably life in general.  If there is life it will be in "special regions" (none known) which can receive extra protection.

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Okay - but the HERRO study is the only comparison study I know of to compare telerobotic exploration with exploration using crew on the ground. If it is deeply flawed, someone else should do a new improved study - it's out of date anyway and needs to be updated.

Agreed,, and it is up to the proponents (like you) to come up with something better.

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Drilling on the Moon during Apollo did work but they had a fair bit of difficulty doing their two meter drills, with the astronauts sometimes falling over and so on as they attempted to do the drill by hand.

They worked as well as could be expected given the fact it was a new piece of kit being used for the first time by inexperienced people in a new environment.  Falling over by people new to the conditions is hardly a sign of great difficulty.  Ever worked on slippery mud or ice? BTW the deepest Apollo drill was almost three metres, not two.

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We haven't really had experience in robotic moles on Mars yet but the designers think it will work. Conditions rather different from Earth with the regolith gardened by small meteorite impacts to considerable depth - most of the ideas involve percussive self hammering moles. ExoMars will have a drill able to drill to 2 meters and the Insight Lander, a drill to go down 5 meters. Insight uses a self hammering mole from DLR. Details.

Ah, you mean those moles. They'll only work in soft material - they won't go down km.  We will see how well Insight's works, it's estimated it will take 30-40 days to reach maximum depth.  Ditto the ExoMars drill, which is a high risk tool, IMHO

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Ten meters at least isn't much of an advance over those, and that's deep enough to get beyond any effects of surface cosmic radiation. There are drills designed on paper to go down kilometers. Without water, any drilling there is different from Earth experiences. And with those Earth examples the people who do the repairs don't have to use spacesuits. If it's deep under the sea, I think they often use robotic submersibles?

That more than double depth which means a substantial increase in drilling hardware.

We do have drills now that go down km, they are huge, 20-30 tonnes of plant.

You don't always use water for terrestrial drilling, you also can use compressed gas or even kerosene.  Depends on the application.  Mars and lunar drills used or designed used are directly comparable to terrestrial drills, terrestrial experience is very relevant.

We have extensive experience in servicing and operating equipment while wearing space suits.  Even on Earth drillers wear PPE that impedes dexterity, and underwater drilling is often tended by divers wearing thick gloves that are more restrictive than future space suit gloves are likely to be.

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In any case if that's the price to pay to keep Mars free of Earth's microbes, that's how you have to do it, but you haven't convinced me that it's easier to send humans to the surface yet, if you ignore planetary protection issues.

Planetary protection does not mean keeping Mars free of terrestrial microbes, it means keeping terrestrial microbes out of potentially habitable environments. The surface of Mars is not habitable Which is why Mars landers/rover are not sterilized, only the parts of them that might enter potentially habitable zones.  They are clean, so as not to contaminate instruments on the lander/rover.

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Okay on power requirements - remember that humans on the surface would need far more by way of power than robots, and in addition, would need oxygen, food etc, somehow sorted out. Why not use the same method, e.g. generating fuel in situ, to power the rovers?

Since I have done the studies on what's required, yes I do know the numbers. 

Why not use the same mass and power resources for unmanned missions?  Because they would still be less effective and less capable than a crew on the surface.  That's assuming that teleoperation at that level is practical in the foreseeable future, which has not been shown in a single study.  You are the proponent here, you come up with the design, mass, power, comms, computing, and volume budgets of such exploration and we can compare.  Without such studies the idea is just speculation.

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Also you could use batteries and solar power. The lunar rover had a range of 35.9 km and weight of 210 kg. That can be improved on surely. So it's certainly feasible to send a battery operated rover to Mars with a range of over 30 km just from the battery power alone. Then you could also use the Mars One idea of spreading thin film panels over the surface to repower it - have a charging point which you set up to recharge the battery. Meanwhile it continues slowly as our current Opportunity does, just using its own solar panels until the batteries are recharged.

Lots of good ideas- come up with the numbers of actual study that does this to that we can compare.

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The pace of discovery would increase hugely - at present teams on Earth communicate with Mars once a day. Even if they could communicate once an hour, that would speed many things up 24 fold. In a month you could do as much as we currently do in two years. So broadband communications with Mars, one of the first things you'd do before a human mission there, would increase the pace of discovery hugely. You could also use simulated real time, a way of eliminating much of the latency issues even operated from Earth. With humans on the spot to do the most challenging teleoperating from orbit.

In a day single astronaut EVA team could do what you are proposing to do in a month, and more.  A teleoperated mission would require substantial investment and would delay getting those boots on the ground.

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I don't understand what you mean by "limited number of sciences" in this context - doesn't it depend on what instruments you send to the surface, whether humans or telerobots or robots operated from Earth?

Even if magical robots can do everything else, you are never going to be able to study human factors on the surface of Mars with robots.  One of the four main goals of Mars exploration is to prepare for permanent human presence.

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A telerobotic rover on the ground is likely to be able to do much the same things a human in a spacesuit can do, given that a human in a spacesuit is quite clumsy, if the rover has binocular vision and haptic feedback. Give it hands and general purpose tools and it doesn't need to be limited in what it can do. Especially bear in mind that telerobotics will continue to improve. Also humans can operate many rovers on the surface and while they are controlling another, the first one can continue with more routine tasks, a bit like a game of civilization.

You are proposing a machine that is currently fantasy.  Do the study, give us numbers.

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I think many of the ideas from 3D VR games and technology will get incorporated into our future space missions. After all they have had orders of magnitude more developer time than space mission software and have lead to many useful innovations.

people have been sating this for over a decade.  No sign of it as yet.

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I think actually that we may get practical experience of telerobotics in space with lunar missions in the near future. When that happens I think we'll find that machines are far more capable than they were in the days of lunakhod, operated from Earth most of the time, semi-autonomous, route finding on their own, able to do many things just by themselves with occasional help from Earth. And that's how I would envision telerobotic exploration of Mars proceeding - operated remotely from Earth, or semi-autonomous, doing a lot of their own driving from place to place and then the crew in orbit around Mars step in to control robots that need particular help. In a situation like that I think that it would be much more than a 3 to 1 ratio compared with them working directly on the surface in spacesuits. They'd also have colour corrected vision, white balanced. And everythign they saw would be streamed back to Earth in HD meaning that after an asronaut has just walked past a place and maybe glanced at a rock via telerobotics, amateurs and experts back on Earth can explore that footage with the same direct telepresence, binocular vision etc experience, and maybe alert them to something they missed. I think a proper comparison study has to take all of this into account.

Numbers, studies, not speculation, please
« Last Edit: 06/21/2016 08:21 am by Dalhousie »
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline robertinventor

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Re: Mars Sample Return - Enter the Red Dragon
« Reply #72 on: 06/21/2016 09:45 am »
Just to say I think a proper comparison study is probably best done by neutral parties or best perhaps, a workshop / panel that includes proponents of both sides in the debate as well as neutral parties. It's almost impossible to be objective if you come to it as a proponent of one or the other approach. The cost of such a panel or workshop would be peanuts compared to the costs of the missions.

The 24 fold increase was for an earlier stage of operation from Earth with broadband communications. Sorry should have said 12 fold increase if you can only work by day, and 24 fold if you have powerful lights and can work by night as well, I expect future rovers to carry powerful lights and of course to have enough power to work by night as well as by day. Would be likely to be more than that because you can communicate many more times than once an hour back and forth when Mars is closer to Earth and because if you use artificial real time, then you can go faster still,

Also this is surely at least a decade into the future by which time we are bound to have much more autonomy of the robots, even just following already mapped out ideas. E.g. the autonomy testing experiments with future ExoMars successor rovers in the Atacama desert. 

Then humans in orbit around Mars operating rovers by teleoperation would surely have the backup assistance of broadband operation of those rovers from Earth at times when they are not operating them themselves. That's because broadband communication is only a tiny part of the expense of a human mission to Mars orbit. It wouldn't make sense to do such an expensive mission as humans in orbit around Mars without broadband communication to Earth, and enough broadband to spare to operate the rovers from Earth as well as from orbit around Mars.

So that's the reason for those assumptions - I think the study should be based on all that as background. And of course should be based on the rovers on the surface having the same levels of power available to them as humans would have in a human mission to the surface, otherwise it's not really a direct comparison. And of course based on any human mission to the surface also having broadband communications, more autonomous rovers, operation of rovers from Earth, etc etc.

We do have experiments in teleoperation, e.g. Tim Peake was recently involved in controlling a rover on Earth from the ISS as an experiment in teleoperation. Whether the astronauts are on the ground or in orbit, they are likely to do a fair bit of teleoperation on Mars. They might rarely step outside their habitats indeed. Every time you do that, it's a risk of dying from failure of your spacesuit. Some think we may get much less by way of EVAs in space in the future also, except for recreation, because it's much safer for the human astronauts to do it with teleoperated robots. We've already had that incident of an astronaut nearly drowning in his spacesuit in an EVA from the ISS, and from time to time astronauts are called back from their EVAs early for safety concerns. And teleoperation is also being tested for repair of the ISS, and refueling of satellites in space, and for construction in space, including Japanese plans for a large radio telescope in space constructed modular fashion telerobotically from Earth, with early tests in orbit showing that it is feasible.

Anyway I think I may have posted too much, I don't want to hog this board and I see rather a lot of posts by me here already in the last day or two. So I think I'll take a break until tomorrow, give others a chance to join in or for other threads of discussion to start up here :). More later, I'm enjoying the discussion.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2016 10:22 am by robertinventor »

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