Ice Ice Baby

[Derek Thunder]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?r ... =2008-090b

Camera on Arm Looks Beneath NASA Mars Lander
May 31, 2008

A view of the ground underneath NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander adds to evidence that descent thrusters dispersed overlying soil and exposed a harder substrate that may be ice.

The image received Friday night from the spacecraft's Robotic Arm Camera shows patches of smooth and level surfaces beneath the thrusters.

"This suggests we have an ice table under a thin layer of loose soil," said the lead scientist for the Robotic Arm Camera, Horst Uwe Keller of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

"We were expecting to find ice within two to six inches of the surface," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for Phoenix. "The thrusters have excavated two to six inches and, sure enough, we see something that looks like ice. It's not impossible that it's something else, but our leading interpretation is ice."

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Hopefully it's ice, and not simply some sort of camera trick. It seems a little too smooth to be a rock, and doesn't really show ventifacting, which is a common weathering process for rocks in low-moisture, high-wind environments such as Mars. I suppose it could be bedrock, but that seems rather unlikely.

E: Also, to facilitate discussion, I'm going to throw out a bomb - as far as a cost-benefit analysis goes, robotic exploration is superior to manned space missions in terms of scientific discovery.

[frigidmagi]

Topic A: I hope it's ice, I will go futher upon my limb and hope for water ice, as opposed to some other exotic ice.

Topic B: Screw Cost benefits. This isn't about cost benefits, if it was we wouldn't send anything out of orbit.

[Lord Iames Osari]

I agree. "Space. The final frontier..."

[Comrade Tortoise]

Topic A: I hope it's ice, I will go futher upon my limb and hope for water ice, as opposed to some other exotic ice.

Topic B: Screw Cost benefits. This isn't about cost benefits, if it was we wouldn't send anything out of orbit.

He means in terms of knowledge gained per unit cost. A rover is cheaper, safer, and frankly yields more data than what we can pull off with a manned mission at our current level of technology. There are significant doubts that we would be capable of surviving the trip there and back. At least not without massive health risks.

[frigidmagi]

I knew exactly what he meant and my reply stands, if it was all about cost benefits there would be no reason to go higher then high Earth Orbit.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Not if your goal is knowledge. There is a distinct leveling off of the gains from going into earth orbit that occured... some time ago. Therefore it is not the most efficient use of resources per bit of actual knowledge we obtain.

A rover at this point is. They are within our ability to easily design and make, they dont risk human life to send out, and they can collect data better than a manned mission could, and can stay on site longer.

It is not ALL about costs and benefits, but they are not fucking irrelevant. A manned mission to mars is beyond our technical and logistic ability. Flat out. It wont be one day. But at present, it is. And even when it is not, it is pointless to send humans when we can send a droid far far cheaper and get the same information. [/i]

[frigidmagi]

The knowledge we gain is of limited use and application down on this planet, therefore if we were completely limited to cost benefits then we wouldn't go looking for it. Knowledge in and of itself does not justify well, it must lend itself to being applied before it can justify cost benefits. The space program is not a cost/benefits thing.

Also given that several sciencists and engineers have shown a way to do a manned mission to Mars for much less then the NASA tag, I'm gonna have to tell you you're not in the right here.

[Derek Thunder]

There are other benefits to unmanned missions. One, engineers can be much less risk-averse due to the low political fallout caused by mission failure. When the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed, there were certainly criticisms, but there was no moment of national tragedy. The entire robotic space program was not suspended for two years in order for expensive congressional investigations to occur. Doing something unorthodox is much more palatable when there are no families to inform should the mission fail. Time is also less of a concern; an unmanned space platform can deal with radiation a lot better than a crew, which will suffer from cumulative damage. There are also fewer space and cargo concerns; an unmanned mission doesn't require empty space for a crew, or food and water; all free space can be utilized for instruments.

A manned mission to Mars is probably not impossible at our level of technology, but there are warning signs; the bloat and inefficiency of the International Space Station, and the increasing popularity of cost-plus contracts, where contractors are guaranteed a certain profit margin no matter how much they spend. I'm familiar with claims that we could get to Mars on 30-50 billion, but given that the technology to secure crewed spacecraft against radiation for years at a time does not exist, I don't think it's a practical idea. Of course there's the problem that the US has no heavy-lift rocket like the Saturn V and the plans were destroyed, so we would need to build a new rocket from scratch.

As to point A: There's a good chance it's water ice, methane ice is predominant at the southern pole.

[frigidmagi]

Robert Zubrin disagrees.

[Derek Thunder]

When I wrote my response I had Zubrin's idea in mind specifically, and what he's asking isn't practical or likely, given the political climate and the untested technology that the plan suggests, like a new heavy-lift booster. The Congressional Budget Office found that the average cost overrun at NASA is about 50% anyway. That being said, an unmanned sample-return mission would probably only cost about 2-5 billion dollars (the Phoenix lander only cost 500mil) so we could get the same samples back to earth at a fraction of the cost anyway.

[frigidmagi]

The Political Climate is not a technological problem.

Nor is 1960s techonology "untested."

Now as to the cost overrun I agree with you, I tend to view it as a result of having way to many managers and admin folks to actual scientist and what not in NASA. In short in my view NASA needs some streamlining.

However the claim that robots are cheaper again leds me back to my point. This isn't about costs/benefits. If it was, the answer would be that a bloody rock from Mars simply isn't worth 5 billion dollars.

[Derek Thunder]

It's untested in the sense that the plans for the Saturn V rocket were lost in the 1970s during NASA's downsizing. Any new design for a heavy-lift booster would be largely from scratch; the Russians were working on one as well but it's unlikely they'd be willing to share.

And for doing actual science, getting samples back for 5 billion dollars as opposed to 50, or even 500 is a much better proposition. Keep in mind NASA still has to budget terrestrial satellites to monitor climate and map the earth (I know firsthand it's still quite difficult to get good satellite elevation maps for a lot of places.)

[frigidmagi]

It's untested in the sense that the plans for the Saturn V rocket were lost in the 1970s during NASA's downsizing. Any new design for a heavy-lift booster would be largely from scratch;

And... So what? We still have a firm grasp of how to make them, hell alot of the people who worked on them are likely still alive. This is a minor problem at best.

And for doing actual science, getting samples back for 5 billion dollars as opposed to 50, or even 500 is a much better proposition.

And you completely miss my point. If we're going to do cost benefit, the analysis would stand that not going to Mars to harvest some rocks is the best course of action rather then spending billions of dollars to do it.

Therefore I regard my declaration of space exploration as still standing.

[Derek Thunder]

Scientists will want to get samples back from Mars one way or the other. It fits squarely with the goal of exploration, which can be for basic science and not just applied science. It may not benefit us to know that the universe is expanding exponentially, but it's interesting nonetheless and adds to the general body of knowledge we as a species possess. Discovery benefits the species even if it doesn't lead to novel technologies.

I don't know how manned missions fit into this. If we can get equally good data with either method, why shouldn't cost be a factor in the final decision? You're offering a false dilemma between either manned missions or nothing at all by throwing expense out the window.

I'm not saying that I'm opposed to a manned mission on principle. I'm talking more about the realm of political and social possibility. if NASA had a 50 billion dollar-per-year budget I couldn't be happier, but this just isn't in the realm of possibility, and unmanned space science is already suffering due to the budgetary constraints placed by Bush's Constellation program for manned missions to the moon.

[frigidmagi]

Actually it's 55 Billion dollars over 10 years, so roughly 5 and 1/2 billion a year, about the same as a one shot robot mission. Also that 55 billion goes towards setting up semi-perament mission sites on both sides of the mission, making follow on missions cheaper. Dropping the costs as time goes on.

And no it's not a false dilemma, if you bring up cost analysis it is perfectly reasonable and logical to ask if the cost of the action is worth it. So is bring back a rock from Mars worth 5 billion dollars? Does the knowledge gained from a machine mission outweigh the cost? It is time to admit that space exploration has nothing to do with short term or even mid term cost benefits analysis.