🚀 go-pugleaf

-From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
-Subject: Re: future space travel
-Date: 10 Jan 93 02:32:25 GMT

-In article <rabjab.7.726624045@golem.ucsd.edu> rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (rabjab) writes:
->Seems like the future will see expanding development of robotic systems
->that will be used to explore every planet and moon, at a vastly 
->reduced cost over sending humans.  

-It is yet to be established that this can be done effectively, except
-perhaps on the Moon where speed-of-light lags are short.  Just flying
-around and taking pictures is the easy part.  Interacting with a complex
-planetary surface, without minute-by-minute human attention, is vastly
-more problematic.  None of the currently-proposed Mars robots, for
-example, is going to have anywhere near the fossil-hunting efficiency
-of even an amateur paleontologist.  Unless robotics improves greatly,
-in-depth investigation of planetary surfaces will still require humans.

On a related note, the Discovery Channel recently replayed an episode of
"Living Planet", which among other things featured the dry valleys of
Antarctica. Conditions there are very reminiscent of Mars - bitter cold
much of the time, bare rock, high winds, and dryer than the Sahara Desert.
(There's even fairly intense UV, by Earth standards.)
Yet life is there - algae living under rocks, sheltered from the most
extreme cold, and getting light needed for photosynthesis from sunlight
shining *through* the rocks. Other algae are found *inside* rocks, located
between the component crystals of the rock.

I agree that currently-envisioned probes would have difficulty finding
life under those conditions. That's not to say that unmanned probes
aren't extremely valuable (and useful as a precursor to manned exploration)
in the near term.

John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov