Apparently apropos of human, rather than robot, exploration, this article says:
Frankly, the chance of finding evidence of life on Mars will always make it a more attractive destination than our close, but definitely dead, satellite.
So it looks like everyone has conveniently forgotten all about Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 short story Before Eden.
That's the one where the humans visit Venus, discover life, high-five each other, and leave.
The next trip discovers that all the Venusian life is extinct, having been contaminated by the humans that had discovered it.
Back in the 1960s people remembered this story. Probes to Mars and Venus were deliberately sterilized before they landed. So far as I know that practice continues today.
The last thing you want to do to a planet that might contain life is to send living things from Earth to visit it. Their residue will screw up every experiment forever after. Even now, when all we send are sterilized robot probes, avoiding contamination by Earth-derived biomolecules is a major struggle.
Yet if we are trying to visit/colonize other planets, at some point this will have to change, right?
Unless you think we're looking for livable planets with no life already on them, at some point natural evolution and propagation of the species calls for us to mix the ecosystem, right?
This is something I've always been confused about. I'm not trying to argue with you, just understand some of the premises.
This is only bad news if you think that manned missions to the moon are a desirable goal. If you think of manned space flight as sucking resources away from much more interesting autonomous robotic exploration of the solar system, then you want the moon as inconvenient as possible to build a base on.
To make manned space flight seem so undesirable is disingenuous to the breathtaking reality of the first manned moon landing. It disheartens me to see that the accomplishment that once inspired a nation is widely and apathetically looked upon as a waste of resources.
Stephen Hawking puts it better than I do:
Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.
US/USSR(Russia now) had sent probes to venus, mars and moon for last 30-40 years. but only now we have info on widespread water availability.
maybe sensors have improved, computing power has increased, but ISRO did it indegeniously and using a low cost model, but needed 2 decades to achieve something great.
if humans can share space technology, we could have been couple of decades ahead in space technology
it would be great if we could atleast have a "2020 a space odyssey"
Maybe if humans could share space technology we would be decades behind in space technology.
US and USSR couldn't share technology because they were racing vs each other. If it weren't for that race, maybe they wouldn't have put the huge effort necessary to send people to space in the 20th century.
[+] [-] mechanical_fish|16 years ago|reply
Frankly, the chance of finding evidence of life on Mars will always make it a more attractive destination than our close, but definitely dead, satellite.
So it looks like everyone has conveniently forgotten all about Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 short story Before Eden.
http://books.google.com/books?id=iL2-iRGDjScC&pg=PA60...
That's the one where the humans visit Venus, discover life, high-five each other, and leave.
The next trip discovers that all the Venusian life is extinct, having been contaminated by the humans that had discovered it.
Back in the 1960s people remembered this story. Probes to Mars and Venus were deliberately sterilized before they landed. So far as I know that practice continues today.
The last thing you want to do to a planet that might contain life is to send living things from Earth to visit it. Their residue will screw up every experiment forever after. Even now, when all we send are sterilized robot probes, avoiding contamination by Earth-derived biomolecules is a major struggle.
[+] [-] chrischen|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|16 years ago|reply
Unless you think we're looking for livable planets with no life already on them, at some point natural evolution and propagation of the species calls for us to mix the ecosystem, right?
This is something I've always been confused about. I'm not trying to argue with you, just understand some of the premises.
[+] [-] idlewords|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flankk|16 years ago|reply
Stephen Hawking puts it better than I do:
Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.
[+] [-] alphamerik|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senthilnayagam|16 years ago|reply
maybe sensors have improved, computing power has increased, but ISRO did it indegeniously and using a low cost model, but needed 2 decades to achieve something great.
if humans can share space technology, we could have been couple of decades ahead in space technology
it would be great if we could atleast have a "2020 a space odyssey"
I dont want to die a earthling
[+] [-] euccastro|16 years ago|reply
US and USSR couldn't share technology because they were racing vs each other. If it weren't for that race, maybe they wouldn't have put the huge effort necessary to send people to space in the 20th century.
[+] [-] mercurio|16 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Mineralogy_Mapper