that's interesting...

[jay]

Early results...
Remote-rovers, terrestrial-controlled (w/delays) observation rate = 0.12
Remote-rovers, Mars-controlled (w/o delays) obs rate = 1 (normalized)
Spacesuited human, obs rate = 5
Shirtsleeve - free human geologist, obs rate = 27

There are too few datapoints to say definitively, but these results imply that a local spacesuited human has something like 40x the science productivity of a Earth-controlled rover...

Comments

[hopeforyou.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wonder what can be done to shrink the gap between a spacesuited human and a free human geologist. Any ideas? What are the most limiting factors to using the suits?

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

What are the relevant cost factors for Mars? IIRC Sojurner and Pathfinder cost about 100 Million US. That would make a manned missed cost-effective (in some sense) if it came in at less than 4 billion... I think a Mars mission is more like 20 to 40 billion?

[hopeforyou.livejournal.com]

Hah. So the nay sayers can put *that* in thier "robotic missions only" pipe, and smoke it.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Two caveats: This study assumed a larger, much-more-capable 2020-class rover, capable of self-navigation, machine vision and onboard planning. The Pathfinder mission was capped at $150M development costs in 1992 dollars... that would be ~220M now, and it didn't include another $120M for the launcher (a Delta II). Or operations costs after launch... plus a bigger, smarter rover would cost more to develop. To do Pathfinder today would cost about $400M, including the launcher and ground operations. A more-capable rover mission would be somewhere around $550-700M total cost.

And the comparison is against one human in the field... actual expeditions would probably send a crew of five, of which three might go out at once.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Bulk is one issue... one is less inclined on Earth to bend or squat frequently when wearing, say, an 30kg backpack with rigid frame. Restricted field-of-view and the difficulty in moving joints ands gloves also slows down the spacesuit-wearer.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

I could now argue that $20B for a 30-day human mission would be cost-effective, compared to the cost of acquiring the same amount of observations purely robotically. Of course, a $20B mission combining humans and robots would likely be better still...