
Nasa to send new rover to Mars in 2020 - czr80
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20603689
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rpm4321
Jesus, I'm all for sending out as many missions as Congress will pay for, but
another Mars rover? Can't they throw a little bit of money towards sending a
melt-bot to Europa or Enceladus, or a boat-bot to Titan already? It'll be 2015
before we even know what Ceres really looks like.

Mars is certainly critically important, but the solar system is a massive
place, and with such limited budgets why wouldn't you spend at least a chunk
of your resources on explorations that have the potential of finding life in
our solar system? We've known about these options for decades, and yet each
mission gets scrapped at the last minute. I don't get NASA's priorities
sometimes.

Also, in that time frame Elon Musk, China, and even NASA have bounced around
various plans for getting humans to Mars. I'm usually an advocate for robotic
exploration, but for the deep digging you will probably have to do to find
something interesting, it may be better to have boots on the ground (for
example exploring for microbial life or fossils below the surface.) It really
seems like we're at the beginning of a Mars space race anyway, and this rover
will inevitably be cancelled 5-10 years from now in order to focus on beating
the Chinese there.

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worldsayshi
I don't see how it can be made feasible to return humans from Mars for a very
long time. Think about the expenditure and infrastructure required to launch a
vehicle to escape velocity on earth. Shipping that kind of equipment _to_ Mars
seems like a undertaking so many times larger than a few rovers.

And I don't see how a one way trip would be politically/ethically possible.

edit: This sounds negative. All things considered; We have to try though. But
perhaps knowing that we can have a sustainable settlement have to be the step
zero of space colonization.

~~~
danielweber
NASA's Mars Reference Mission [1] calls for landing an un-fueled return
vehicle on Mars and then manufacturing fuel.

In-situ production or not, any sane humans-to-Mars mission is going to involve
landing a bunch of equipment at the landing site ahead of time. The marsnauts
are going to have very complete maps of their new home before they even launch
from Earth.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Design_Reference_Mission_3...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Design_Reference_Mission_3.0)

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doogle88
This is good. They'll be able to ask the Chinese to walk over and repair it if
it breaks.

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prawks
It is naive to ask why another? I was under the impression that Curiosity was
supposed to be like _the_ rover to end all Martian rovers. What else do they
need? It seems like there must be _something_ else to do aside from.... rove.
Maybe not manned exploration, but something to push things further towards
that?

Or are they still stuck on "We must make a final, irrefutable conclusion on
whether life has or has not existed on Mars prior to introducing organisms to
the planet"? Am I the only one who thinks that the search is kind of, well,
silly at this point? How much of the surface have they covered with rovers?
I'd imagine it would take much longer, and a much more exhaustive search to
come to any sort of definitive conclusion.

~~~
nkoren
> How much of the surface have they covered with rovers?

They've landed four successful rovers on the surface. One the size of a
microwave oven, two the size of small golf carts, and one the size of a BMW
Mini.

Meanwhile, Mars has approximately the same land area as all the continents of
earth put together. It's a big place.

Feel free to do the math to answer your question, but there'll be an awful lot
of zeros after the decimal place.

~~~
prawks
It was a rhetorical question, perhaps improperly phrased as such. The point
being that they have barely even begun to attempt to scratch the surface. How
effective are rovers at doing this? Shouldn't the ultimate goal to be to
gather data to allow more extensive exploration (likely by humans)?

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meaty
Well it looks like I'm going to be dead by the time they send something
interesting there.

Back in the days of Apollo, they risked a hell of a lot in the name of
exploration. It'd be nice to see the same spirit applied to Mars.

~~~
takluyver
My inner devil's advocate says: is that the spirit of spending massive amounts
of money on one-upmanship and buying votes* ? ;-)

In reality, I don't have a strong opinion on this. It would be amazing to see
humans reach Mars in my lifetime, but I can see why governments aren't pouring
money into it.

* From the Wikipedia page Moon Landing: "Mindful that the Apollo Program would economically benefit most of the key states in the next election—particularly his home state of Texas because NASA's base was in Houston—Johnson championed the Apollo program."

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nakedrobot2
Doesn't Elon Musk want to have people walking around on Mars by 2020?

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MichaelAO
Yep! I thought this clip was cool -

What Is The Business Model For Mars? Elon Musk
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fS1FxBq64A>

~~~
worldsayshi
"I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people
settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as
hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach." -
[Bruce Sterling](<http://boingboing.net/2004/01/08/sterling-ill-believe.html>)

I don't see how people can believe in a long time prospect of Mars
colonization as long as we shun deserts and polar regions. Seriously. Sure
Mars would be fun to visit (at this point). But live there, with our current
technological advancements in mind?

~~~
MichaelAO
That quote is pretty spot on. However, the whole point is to "back up the
biosphere" in order to protect human consciousness from an earth shattering
event (pun intended). At some point in the future, we're going to have to get
off this planet.

~~~
rwmj
That would be a useful outcome, but it's not a motivation for the people who
have to live in what is in reality a freezing, extremely remote desert.

~~~
worldsayshi
Then we will have to find ways to make it enjoyable, or give up the prospect
all together.

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scotty79
I think this kinds of headlines would really anger me if I were 85.

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robodale
This is great news, but I hope Elon Musk's human crew will be watching the
landing _from_ Mars.

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brador
Why does it take so long? I mean 8 years to send a V2? what's stopping them
rolling it out in 1 year?

I don't understand the reason for such an extended timescale.

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arrrg
With what money?

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htf
With its annual budget of $18.724 billion maybe? Seriously, where does that
money go?

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natep
For a start...

* Operating their current missions <http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html>

* Designing and building future missions <http://www.nasa.gov/missions/future/index.html>

* Public outreach/education

~~~
htf
Thanks, that's a good list. However, one would be hard pressed to convince
people to voluntarily fund this to the tune of 20 billion dollars a year.

~~~
sdfadsfa
But we have no problem spending trillions of dollars on wars and on bailouts.
Awesome. Stu_pid meets mor_on.

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panacea
I can't but think this is bad PR for NASA (in an unintended consequence kind
of way).

"How cool is it that we've got an awesome rover on Mars! ...oh they're sending
a new generation one there in 18 years time? Bah... now I have to wait for the
good stuff to happen. Curiosity is already last generation gear."

~~~
aptwebapps
8 years, not 18, and I don't think many people think of Mars rovers the same
way as they think of their phone.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I'm not so sure. There was a lot of griping about the early photos from
Curiosity as compared to the iphone camera.

That went away when the "real" pictures started coming back, but people
definitely expect space technology to move as fast as consumer tech.

~~~
aptwebapps
I'm sorry, but I have to go on a little rant here. Let me state in advance
that it's completely out of proportion to the subject matter and that this is
more of chance to drag out my soap box than anything else.

HN is a place where you shouldn't have to spell everything out or restate the
context every step of the way. But here's what just happened:

1) panacea posited the idea, perhaps humorously, that the news of another
rover on the horizon would diminish interest in Curiosity much like the
announcement of a new phone diminishes interest in the current model.

2) I said I didn't think people thought of the rovers the same was as they
thought of their phones.

3) You disagree with that in a completely orthogonal way.

Context is everything. If you read panacea's comment and then my comment you
should not get the idea that I'm saying there can not be any congruence
between rovers and smart phones in the public's thoughts. Obviously, if the
pictures were not high res people would complain and the easiest reference
point to hand would be a phone camera. That has nothing to do with what I was
saying.

Again, this a pet peeve, but carrying on a discussion via medium such as this
rewards a little carefulness.

~~~
waterlesscloud
No offense, but yeah, I was intentionally jumping context in order to express
what I considered to be an interesting idea. There's no intent to imply what
you said is wrong, but to move beyond it to more interesting topics.

Comparing the Mars rovers to phones made me think of the ways in which the
public does in fact do that. There's interesting conversations to be had in
that direction. Perhaps future shock has turned into future expectation. Or
blase-ness. Or something.

This is personal for me, and I've been around long enough to realize I'm never
going to have what I want in this regard, but I do wish conversations were
more fluid when there are more interesting directions to pursue beyond the
immediate context.

~~~
aptwebapps
There's no reason you can't change the subject - you just need a segue so we
(or maybe just I) know what's going on. ;)

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tocomment
I'd like to see it have an instrument to "culture" soil samples with various
temperature, and moisture settings.

It would also try increasing atmospheric pressure, and sunlight to possibly
speed up any biological reactions.

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melling
Anyone think it will be possible to crowd-fund a private rover by then?

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cryptoz
This is a crowd-funded rover in a way, though not private. About 200 million
people have contributed a little bit of money to the project.

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tocomment
By 2020 I'd kind of hope we're sending mostly-autonomous humanoid robots.
Wouldn't that really inspire people's imagination? And they could start
building the infrastructure for a colony.

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e03179
Why "humanoid" robots? Why not just "robots" that can do a job no matter what
they look like?

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tocomment
If nothing else, PR value. And to inspire new engineers.

~~~
khuey
If you want PR value, send flesh and blood humans. Otherwise send the tool
that's best for the job.

