This argument ignores the actual Mars exploration strategy, especially sample return, and is absent any of the cost analysis necessary to perform apples-to-apples comparisons of robotic and human exploration investments and missions.

“You’ll never “understand” the lunar surface, let alone Mars, without tackling the hard-to-automate stuff like finding that rare one-of-a-very-small-number sample buried in a vast volume of drift.”

But we have robots – built on shoestring grant budgets — that can autonomously and accurately sort a handful or two meteorites from hundreds of other geological samples in Antarctica today. It’s hardly a stretch to imagine teams of more advanced robots combing through regolith or drift for similar, hard-to-find samples. In fact, computers and robots excel at tedious and highly repetitive tasks.

“For example, I’ll bet money that if there is ice on the moon, it is well distributed, probably deeply buried, and certainly hard to find. Automated landers almost certainly are not going to cut it.”

In terms of finding thinly distributed and/or deeply buried lunar ice, a fixed human base, with limited roving and remote sensing capabilities, is going to be at a disadvantage to orbiters with deep ground-penetrating instruments and robotic landers/rovers that can go anywhere. In terms of verifying the discovery, again, the infrastructure and safety concerns associated with putting astronauts at the site and around heavy drilling machinery will put humans at a disadvantage to aggressive robotic drilling and sample return missions, which carry a much less expensive infrastructure burden and no human safety concerns. And if verification is performed via penetrators (like LCROSS), astronauts are irrelevant.

“My goal is not to understand the Solar System — which is clearly and absolutely impossible in any single lifetime — but to set up the conditions that might let future generations of scientists take a stab at it.”

And those conditions are better created by undertaking an aggressive program of robotic and telescopic exploration and stimulating and leveraging the private human space flight industry than by spending the next quarter century reenacting the Apollo effort of four decades ago.
Over the next quarter century, I’d much rather leave my children or grandchildren a legacy of rovers on and samples from Mars and Enceladus, of submarines exploring the ocean of Europa, of aircraft exploring the early organic atmosphere of Titan, of advanced telescopes imaging Earth-like worlds around other planets, and of vibrant private Earth orbital transport systems and industries.

That legacy will do so much more to make human space exploration desirable, affordable, and sustainable for future generations than one government-run, four-person repeat of Apollo at the lunar south pole.

“Science, real understanding, requires observation and experimentation; the latter is not a nice-to-have option.”

Agreed. And in terms of experimentation, science is much better served by multiple robotic sample returns — putting hundreds of highly diverse samples from across a planetary target into the hands of thousands of scientists at scores of Earth-based laboratories – than putting one, two, or a few part-time scientists/astronauts at one or two locations on a planetary target.

“As I argued a few years ago in this forum, I’m very dubious about a lot of this. First, you overstate your case. With a few exceptions, we haven’t “discovered” much of anything in cosmology, and I think we’ve “deduced” entirely too much.”

Discovery always involves deduction. Making deductions from observations is the very definition of science. Quibbling over whether Hubble discovered or deduced from redshifts that all galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way is no different than quibbling over whether an archeologist discovered or deduced that a fossil represents a missing link in an evolutionary chain. Just as Hubble cannot travel to the galaxies and directly measure how their distances are changing with time, neither can the archeologist travel back in time and directly observe the process of evolution. Humans are not omniscient or omnipresent – we must deduce all the time from indirect observation to understand the nature of reality and nature’s processes.

“Scientists, if they are scientists and not modern day “witch doctors,” would have the guts to look beyond their immediate toys and accept and admit that.”

This statement is narrow, extreme, out of touch with how science (or just human comprehension) actually works, and full of hyperbole. To compare the practice of modern astrophysics to ancient cosmological mythmaking is like comparing modern Mesozoic paleontology to ancient dragon mythology. There is a world of difference between “witch doctors”, religious leaders, and ancient philosophers narrating stories to explain natural phenomena, and modern scientists (of any stripe) continually testing their theories about the nature of reality against every increasing observations.

And I thought only the Kansas State School Board created ridiculous analogies to discredit the practice of science.

The logic here is contradictory. We can’t say, out of one side of our mouth, that there has been no progress in human space exploration because there has been no investment in human space exploration; and then argue out the other side of our mouth that the assembly of the ISS — a $60-100 billion investment depending on who’s doing the counting — is a major advance supporting future human space exploration. We space cadets can’t have it both ways.

“Well, maybe, but for all the zillions of dollars invested in these industries over many, many decades, plus Moore’s law,”

But that’s exactly the point — that robotic space exploration leverages untold zillions of dollars of private investment in multiple industries over many decades, plus some very favorable physics, while many of the technologies necessary for human space exploration actually have no private sector application and investment and must fight uphill against some very unfavorable physics.

I’m not arguing that we should abandon human space exploration forever, but why keep banging our heads against this wall? For now, let’s put our space exploration bucks where they’ll give us the biggest bang (aggresive robotic exploration) and put a hold on human space exploration until the Bigelows and Musks of the world can supply affordable, 21st-century equivalents of caravels and conestogas so that our human space exploration efforts are sustainable for once. Let’s wait on human space exploration until, like the industries supporting robotics, there’s actually a private human space flight industry to leverage off of.

“the products of these industries still could not find a fossil on Mars.”

How do we know? We have robots today that can autonomously seek out meteorites in Antartica and differentiate them from other geology. It’s not much of a stretch from there to robots that can differentiate fossils from other geology. For the next 10 to 100 years, an effective, fossil-seeking robot will be a lot closer to realization, a helluva lot more affordable, and much easier to field than a human Mars expendition.

And besides, what makes us think that a few astronauts would do any better? Astronauts can only work a handful of hours per day; robots can work round the clock. Astronauts must spend a lot of their working time tending to the artificial environment that supports them; robots do not. An astronaut expedition can only stay on the surface of Mars for around a year; the Mars rovers are exceeding four years and the next rover has the potential to last a decade or more. Astronaut safety will demand a safe landing spot in what will likely be a geologically uninteresting location; robotic landings can take risks to reach geologically interesting locations. Astronauts will have a limited roving range; the range of robots will be limited only by their lifetimes. The number of astronaut missions will be greatly constrained by their high cost while manifold more robotic missions could be fielded for the same or much less cost. I could go on and on…

And again, I’d point out that this robot versus astronaut discussion ignores one of the central strategies of the Mars program, which is to bring samples back to Earth, where the examination of samples for evidence of past life is not limited to a few tens of robots or a handful of astronauts but scores of labs and hundreds or thousands of scientists. No matter who or what is doing the fieldwork at Mars, verification, classification, and understanding of the samples and findings will take place on Earth.

[quote]
They couldn’t even, by themselves, assemble a complex machine like an aircraft or a skyscraper.
[/quote]

That’s due to the nature of those industries and the investment choices they’ve made, not the complexity of the assembly or robotic limitations. The assembly of other complex constructs, like automobiles, is highly automated today, for example.

“I wrote an article for Space News on this subject a while back.”

I apologize upfront if I sound like a jerk, but to be brutally honest, getting an op-ed printed in Space News does not mean that the argument in the op-ed stands up to any level of scrutiny. Space News is an industry rag with very low editorial standards and practically no peer review. Get the same article published in a relevant, peer-reviewed journal like Space Policy, and it would be much more impressive. (And maybe you have and I’m just not aware and should shut up.)

“The manager of NASA’s Mars program at the time wrote an, in my opinion, ill advised response that boiled down to, “Yes, Mr. Robertson is correct that we cannot find a fossil on Mars, but our robots do work and there are some things we can discover,” which I hardly dispute!”

The exchange shows a deep lack of understanding about the science strategy behind the Mars program and where the program is at today in executing that strategy. The ultimate goal of the program is to find life but the strategy is to first identify potential habitable environments, i.e., “follow the water”. And that’s what the current rovers and orbiters are focused on and designed for. Once those habitats are identified, then the strategy is to send rover and sample return missions capable of identifying life.

An analogy from you own archeological background — you don’t go digging up fossils until you’ve identify geology that supports them and the substrate that corresponds to the chronology you’re interested in.

“But, that won’t work. When was the last time that the private sector went into a new frontier with no market and put in infrastructure that wouldn’t pay off in a marketable product for decades?”

That’s your argument, not mine. I have not and would never argue that the government should invest in multi-ten billion-dollar efforts, like the ISS or a lunar base, for the sake of a few measly billions in private investment to try service those destinations.

Rather, what I’m arguing is that the government should wait until there is actually a human space flight industry (in Earth orbit is fine) to leverage – again, the equivalent of ships and wagons built for private purposes but that can be adapted to exploration applications. Until then, the government costs of establishing the destinations you’re interested in will continue to be too exorbitant to ever justify the private investments made to service them.

“As with the Space Station, the government has to provide the initial markets that the private sector can bootstrap off of.”

I understand the abstract logic of your argument, but the disparity between the public investments and the private investments involved, and the incredible time lag between the public investments and the private investments, shows the argument to be false, at least as it applies to space or NASA in the real world.

Depending on who’s doing the accounting, by the time its assembly is complete in 2010 or thereabouts, we will have spent $60 to $100 billion on the Space Station over more than two decades. NASA’s investment in COTS is a little less than $500 million, and even in the wildest 10-to-1 cost-sharing scenario, would only produce a maximum of $5 billion in private investment towards the end of those two decades. That’s a delay of about 20 years in the startup of commercial investment and a return on the government’s money of between –91% and –95% (yes, minus 91 to 95 percent). The logic, especially as it applies to space and NASA, just breaks down under the real-world numbers.

Instead of wasting so many precious taxpayer dollars on such an expensive, government-designed, -built, and –managed facility and then tacking on a little commercial COTS effort at the end, NASA could have just bought commercial from the get-go. For example, NASA could have purchased or just rented services from the Industrial Space Facility (ISF), proposed by Max Faget’s Space Industries Inc. back in 1982, for about $250 million in then-year dollars. Even accounting for inflation, by now, the nation could have had literally scores of privately designed, built, and operated space stations on the ISF model for the cost of ISS. (The STS could only have supported a handful of these private space stations, but the point is still valid.)

Or, instead of wasting so many precious taxpayer dollars on such an expensive, government-designed, -built, and –managed facility and then tacking on a little commercial COTS effort at the end, NASA could have focused its dollars on key technologies to support a vibrant commercial human space flight sector. For example, JSC spent probably only a few tens of millions of dollars, a $100 million tops, on the inflatable module technology that Bigelow is using for his space stations. Imagine how much farther along we’d be if the $60-100 billion spent on ISS (or some small fraction thereof) went into similar investments – starting a couple decades ago – instead of ISS?

2nd – the amount of people and supplies – to interest private groups/industry, realistically, you need to have the potential for a lot of profit. That means realistically, something like monthly flights. This is something that is not in the cards for a base that has 3-6 people. Much more likely, a single flight every 6 months. Combine this with government controling access, and you don’t have the insentive.

I won’t say these problems can’t be over come – one sure way to do it would be to allow anyone (or almost anyone) who wanted to add a module to a moonbase (or ISS) to do so for a fee. Without the possiblity of personal expansion, I just don’t see a base providing this possiblity. The potential for personal expansion is there in the current Bigelow stations (at least, it seems to me), since he will rent whole modules to anyone who has money. I don’t see that happening on ISS, and I have no reason to think it would happen with a moonbase.

In the past, may early markets on a frontier were created for imperial or religeous reasons having little or no rational basis. But, their existance allowed often private organizations to justify developing and maintaining supply routes. Thus, why or how NASA (or Biglow or somebody else) builds a base in space does not matter, only that it exists and someone’s willing to pay for supplying it.

— Donald

This is widely believed, but it is also untrue. Read, this.

Paul, the fact we are still having the debate at all is a damning indictment of what has been accomplished or is planned to be accomplished by NASA in the opening of space

This I agree with. However, launch prices won’t come down until there is a destination, and even then it’s likely to take multiple generations of development for a truly dramatic reduction. I have not said “opening space” would be easy, only necessary for science (as well as other activities). The reason, I think, that we have accomplished so little is that we have always tried for technological push (e.g,, with ever better rocket technology) rather than destination pull (by establishing a long-term base to serve as a market for better transportation). Now that we have such a base, we are starting to see the very beginnings of private investment in better transportation.

If we want better transportation to the moon, somebody has to establish a reason for it to exist — first.

— Donald

It looks like a bunch of guys at NASA are so far out of touch with reality, that there is no hope for them

Exactly. The “humans vs. robots” argument, so often presented as if it were a deep philosophical-spiritual issue, is simply the challenge of CATS in another guise. Other things being equal, of course everyone — including every planetary scientist I’ve ever known — would prefer to have human investigators (and infrastructure for a long stay, and rovers, and a nice field lab, a-and a pony!) on the Moon or Mars or anywhere else.

But at these launch prices per kg, other things are notequal: the real-world choice is between a very few very expensive manned expeditions at long intervals — with science wedged into the cracks of “get ‘em back alive” as it was in Apollo — and many more less expensive robots.

The only “resolution” for this tired old pseudo-controversy will be not some grand new consensus on the primacy of humans or of robots… but access to space cheap enough that we can do plenty of both. At that point, all the column inches and bandwidth devoted to the Ineffable Value of the Hands-On Explorer will become as irrelevant as the Montgolfiers’ debates over whether to send up the chicken and sheep before the barometer or after.

Er, ISS and STS have always been under “exploration” budget line. How many billions is all that, total ? Dramatic ? Yes. In most horrible way.