Something about creating a viable, yet cool, Mars orbital habitat for astronauts to study the Red Planet with droned robots from orbit seems ridiculously odd.If you can send and assemble what's needed to survive in orbit, sending a lander as part of the deal shouldn't be an impossible thing.
Quote from: Dalhousie on 05/19/2016 03:52 amI think it is reasonable to expect astronauts to be able to control a surface operations for the full 540 days in Mars orbit. It's not going to be "full" anything. Half the time the rover will be in darkness--no operations there. Then what about the human spacecraft being out of line of sight? Then what about crew operations requirements? Do you have a crew person up during their sleep time to control a rover during its day time? How many crew do you devote to this? If you have a 4-person crew, do you devote 100% of 1 crewmembers' time to running the rover? And if so, then that person has to sleep, so now you probably need another crewmember as backup. And can you do that? Can you devote a lot of crew time to running a rover?
I think it is reasonable to expect astronauts to be able to control a surface operations for the full 540 days in Mars orbit.
So you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.
Now my limited understanding of modern human-robot interactions is that the human is in the loop for a short period of time--they look at the data, figure out what to do, and then use some pull down menus to say "Do X, Y and Z" and then press "Engage." Then the robot figures out how to do all that stuff. So the human may be involved in small increments over a long period of time.... which of course goes back to the earlier question of whether reducing that lag-time in communications is worthwhile? Are you gaining anything? Are you gaining enough for it to be worth doing?
Quote from: ncb1397 on 05/18/2016 05:57 pmStored LH2 was done during Apollo. No point in designing a mission orbit based on remote imaging from the manned platform. As far as science, it would aid in operation of Mars 2020 and potentially other international rovers.As far as Apollo, that stored LH2 didn't have to loiter for more than 24 hours - HUGE difference from trying to keep it chilled for months. As far as imaging, true but that doesn't stop the ISS from doing it. The rovers via telepresence, possibly.
Stored LH2 was done during Apollo. No point in designing a mission orbit based on remote imaging from the manned platform. As far as science, it would aid in operation of Mars 2020 and potentially other international rovers.
Quote from: redliox on 05/18/2016 09:09 pmQuote from: ncb1397 on 05/18/2016 05:57 pmStored LH2 was done during Apollo. No point in designing a mission orbit based on remote imaging from the manned platform. As far as science, it would aid in operation of Mars 2020 and potentially other international rovers.As far as Apollo, that stored LH2 didn't have to loiter for more than 24 hours - HUGE difference from trying to keep it chilled for months. As far as imaging, true but that doesn't stop the ISS from doing it. The rovers via telepresence, possibly.You must be referring to the Saturn V third stage. The CSM used cryogenic hydrogen tanks for fuel cells. The supply lasted for a lot longer than 24 hours. This diagram seems to indicate that at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module#/media/File:Apollo-linedrawing.png
I'm trying to understand the reference mission of humans-to-Mars-orbit. Presumably we're talking about an opposition class mission, as spending 2.5+ years in zero-g is beyond our mitigation capabilities at present. So what? A ~560 day mission with ~40 days in Mars orbit?
Quote from: Blackstar on 05/19/2016 02:04 pmSo you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.Except eliminating latency in operations.
Quote from: MattMason on 05/19/2016 05:54 pmSomething about creating a viable, yet cool, Mars orbital habitat for astronauts to study the Red Planet with droned robots from orbit seems ridiculously odd.If you can send and assemble what's needed to survive in orbit, sending a lander as part of the deal shouldn't be an impossible thing.Robert Zubrin was making the same point roughly 20 years ago when he conceived Mars Direct, and I likewise agree with your point on how the focus should be Mars itself as much as I'd like to see exploration of its moons. It makes more sense to put things directly on the surface. The 2 most useful applications this orbital lab could make would be as a propellant depot and a staging point, both for Mars, its moons, and Earth return.
Quote from: Dalhousie on 05/19/2016 11:51 pmQuote from: Blackstar on 05/19/2016 02:04 pmSo you quickly end up with the ability to only have an astronaut interact with the rover for a very limited amount of time, possibly for a very limited amount of time that the rover can actually do stuff. So the rover has all kinds of capabilities and the human isn't adding much.Except eliminating latency in operations.And still that question is unanswered--what is the benefit of doing that and for what operation? Eliminating latency for driving the rover? Or moving its arm? Or pressing "start" on the science instruments? Which rover operation is dramatically improved with a human much closer to make that decision? I've just seen this asserted repeatedly, but never actually analyzed.Something that is also not examined is how you would design a rover for dual use so that it could be briefly (i.e. a few months) operated by somebody locally vs. many years of operations by somebody on Earth. That has not been done before, but may require careful systems design because of the way you would be communicating with it.
Some NASA guy was being interviewed on the Planetary.org podcast this week, and gave out some statistic about how long it would take a human geologist to complete the same work done by one of the rovers. The answer was something like a few hours.I disagree with using that comparison to justify human filghts to Mars. It would not take a few hours, it would take 20 years. Because the geologist is not on Mars, he is standing on Earth, at some space conference, wearing a business suit. The robots have already been there, working.By the time humans (geologists or otherwise) get to Mars, they will not have to compete against what robots can do now, but what they will be doing then. Advances in AI and robot technology is advancing a lot faster than the willingness of politicians to fund manned Mars trips.
Some NASA guy was being interviewed on the Planetary.org podcast this week, and gave out some statistic about how long it would take a human geologist to complete the same work done by one of the rovers. The answer was something like a few hours.
I disagree with using that comparison to justify human filghts to Mars. It would not take a few hours, it would take 20 years. Because the geologist is not on Mars, he is standing on Earth, at some space conference, wearing a business suit. The robots have already been there, working.
Unfortunately, the people who designed the operations processes for the Lunakhods, and the people who actually operated them, are mostly long-dead (or at least long-retired); I'd have doubts about being able to pull out their lessons learned, or why they decided on such a low-latency paradigm vs. the plan-a-day's-worth-of-operations-and-let-'er-go paradigm we've used for our American Mars rovers. It would be really interesting to see or hear any oral histories captured from those people.
And still that question is unanswered--what is the benefit of doing that and for what operation? Eliminating latency for driving the rover? Or moving its arm? Or pressing "start" on the science instruments? Which rover operation is dramatically improved with a human much closer to make that decision? I've just seen this asserted repeatedly, but never actually analyzed.Something that is also not examined is how you would design a rover for dual use so that it could be briefly (i.e. a few months) operated by somebody locally vs. many years of operations by somebody on Earth. That has not been done before, but may require careful systems design because of the way you would be communicating with it.
Quote from: the_other_Doug on 05/20/2016 12:52 pmUnfortunately, the people who designed the operations processes for the Lunakhods, and the people who actually operated them, are mostly long-dead (or at least long-retired); I'd have doubts about being able to pull out their lessons learned, or why they decided on such a low-latency paradigm vs. the plan-a-day's-worth-of-operations-and-let-'er-go paradigm we've used for our American Mars rovers. It would be really interesting to see or hear any oral histories captured from those people.Are you aware that NASA actually collaborated with Russian Lunokhod and Marsokhod designers starting from 1994 1992 ? TwoFour years before Sojourner
Yep. And JPL seemed to say "Thanks for your information, but it was Not Invented Here, so we won't be using any of it."And it wasn't so much the Lunokhod/Marsokhod designers, it was the designer, singular. A guy named Alexander Kemurdzhian. Yes, he had a design team in the USSR back in the '60s, but I'm pretty certain he was the only person invited to "compare approaches on the design of planetary rovers" with designers at JPLIIRC, he brought a small test rover he had been playing with and demonstrated it for the JPL people, but again, this one didn't have any design heritage that was built into later JPL-designed rovers. And from what I've seen of JPL people describing this encounter, they seemed more interested in the design aspect of the Soviet hardware -- not so much the operational paradigm, which is what I was suggesting we check into and see if there's any documentation about.I think Kemurdzhian's biggest claim to fame, outside of Lunokhod, was the fact that he was able to put together, on extremely short notice, remote-operated rovers used to survey the damage on the roof of the reactor building at Chernobyl after the explosion and fire there.Unfortunately, Kemurdzhian has been gone for more than a decade, and I'm pretty certain most of the people who operated the Lunokhods are no longer with us, either -- it's been coming up on half a century since they were active, after all. So, that one encounter JPL had with Kemurdzhian was pretty much it, in terms of checking with those who operated the only real-time rovers ever operated off-Earth.I'd love to see oral histories captured at that time that give details on rover operations discussions JPL may have had with Kemurdzhian, but I've never seen such come to light -- and, just to point out the obvious, the people at JPL who talked with Kemurdzhian back in the '90s are likely now, too, getting long in the tooth, are gone, or are retired. Think about the scene in "The Martian" where they had to gather up surviving members of the Pathfinder team, and recall thinking to yourself "I bet there wouldn't be that many survivors of that team by the 2030s..."
Using ROVs to clear a landing site, set up beacons for precision landing, start building a base with prelanded components, supplies etc. Construction activities, not just science.