kcarroll@utzoo.uucp (Kieran A. Carroll) (12/19/89)
jmck%norge@Sun.COM (John McKernan) writes: > > In article <1989Dec12.193633.28964@utzoo.uucp> > henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: > >accomplished much more than some of its detractors admit, and it would > >have taken a very large and costly unmanned program to get similar > >results. It *may* be true that it would have been cheaper to do things > >that way, but it is *not* a self-evident fact. > > Our experience in space makes it empirically evident that unmanned space can > currently achieve as much or more than manned space for orders of magnitude > less. Everything that Apollo accomplished (sample returns, pictures, etc) > could have been done for less with unmanned technology. Given the greatly > increased capabilities of unmanned technology that is even more true today > than it was then. > Simply repeating the contention that it would have been cheaper unmanned >still< doesn't make it a self-evident fact :-) Seriously, >we don't know< if it would have been cheaper to accomplish all that Apollo accomplished, using unmanned missions. Nobody ever designed a set of unmanned missions that would do what Apollo did; nobody has ever costed out an unmanned version. There were elements of Apollo that would have been very expensive to automate, such as putting a geologist on-site in order to select which samples to return; it's likely that "telepresence" >still< isn't good enough to allow the same amount of judgement to be exercised, despite 25 intervening years of technology development. Also, as Henry has pointed out earlier, the cost of Apollo itself (i.e. developing the CM, SM and LEM, as well as the training facilities, and support facilities required for supporting men in space) was quite a bit less than the cost of (Apollo+Saturn). If a large number of >unmanned< missions had been sent to the moon, they would have required a launch vehicle too; maybe not as big as Saturn, but probably many more launches would have been required in order to accomplish what Apollo did in six missions. Do you attribute the cost of the launcher development to each program that used the launch vehicle? By that measure, Voyager probably "really" cost a couple of billion dollars (and Galileo "really" cost about 6 billion :-). If you don't do it for unmanned missions, why do it for Apollo? Sure, Apollo/Saturn was an expensive program. Too bad Congress decided to throw away all the infrastructure the program had developed, just after it had been payed for; otherwise, follow-on manned missions could have been cheap enough to satisfy even Van Allen. As far as I can tell, >nobody< on the net has addressed Henry's main points yet. -- Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute uunet!attcan!utzoo!kcarroll kcarroll@zoo.toronto.edu
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (12/19/89)
In article <129351@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> jmck@sun.UUCP (John McKernan) writes: >> Apollo >>accomplished much more than some of its detractors admit, and it would >>have taken a very large and costly unmanned program to get similar >>results. It *may* be true that it would have been cheaper to do things >>that way, but it is *not* a self-evident fact. > >Our experience in space makes it empirically evident that unmanned space can >currently achieve as much or more than manned space for orders of magnitude >less. Everything that Apollo accomplished (sample returns, pictures, etc) >could have been done for less with unmanned technology... Uh, John, did you *read* what I wrote? If so, might I ask for the details and numbers behind your assertion that this is "empirically evident"? My point is precisely that it's not. Remember, I am talking about getting the *same* results -- volume and diversity of samples, surface experiments emplaced, cores drilled, precision landings at pre-chosen sites, etc. -- not the far smaller and simpler missions undertaken by all unmanned landers to date. I would be interested in seeing cost estimates for an unmanned Apollo equivalent, and I don't know exactly what the bottom line would be, but I know one thing: when you start comparing apples to apples, instead of apples to oranges, unmanned isn't so cheap any more. >...If we really >want to explore the moon, we need a base were at least a couple of >dozen people can live for a long time. They need the ability to >travel over the entire surface of the moon. The base needs to be self- >sustaining and self-expanding with no or low mass supplies from Earth. >All of this needs to be done for a maximum of roughly 200 billion >dollars. We don't have the technology to do this now and we need a >diverse R&D effort to get there. Sorry, I simply don't believe this. Ever looked at some of the plans for extended Apollo operations, and the bases that were expected to follow? We had the technology to explore the Moon at affordable cost twenty years ago. The people claiming we need oodles of new technology and a decade of R&D and vast sums of money are the empire builders and contractors, who care about the process and not the result. -- 1755 EST, Dec 14, 1972: human | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology exploration of space terminates| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
steve@groucho.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson) (12/20/89)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes [referring to John McKernan's assertion that it is "empirically evident" that the unmanned program is more cost-effective than the manned program]: >My point is precisely that it's not. Remember, I am talking about getting >the *same* results -- volume and diversity of samples, surface experiments >emplaced, cores drilled, precision landings at pre-chosen sites, etc. -- >not the far smaller and simpler missions undertaken by all unmanned landers >to date. I believe one should keep in mind that different tools often entail different methodologies. I believe it would be a mistake to attempt to compare (assuming for the moment that one could ;-) manned and unmanned exploration using as the judgement criteria the detailed and immediate goals and results of the manned activities. It would be better, in my opinion, to refer to a higher level of endevour, such as the quantity and quality of the increase in our knowledge, or the potential for further advancement in this area. Of course, this, in itself, is frought with the potential for subjective disagreements -- as well as being currently impossible (at least for the Apollo program). Nevertheless, it is, IMHO, good to keep in mind. --Steve Emmerson steve@unidata.ucar.edu
tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) (12/20/89)
In article <1989Dec12.193633.28964@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >The point is, people keep saying [that the Moon could have been explored >more cheaply unmanned than manned] without proving it. Not much of a point; lots of unproven-in-detail assertions fly around here on both sides of the issue, including from Henry. On to something more interesting. > Apollo >accomplished much more than some of its detractors admit, There's some fancy Latin name for this argumentative fallacy but I forget what it is. There are people who think Apollo was a fake; Apollo sure accomplished more than THOSE detractors admit, dinnit? > and it would >have taken a very large and costly unmanned program to get similar >results. This assumes that the exact laundry list of whatever finally happened to get done on Apollo missions is actually what we needed to do. But the science Apollo did consisted of what could be shoehorned into the incredible constraints of a manned mission profile. It's to NASA's great credit that they did as much as they did under the circumstances. But science NEVER CAME FIRST as it can with an unmanned mission. > It *may* be true that it would have been cheaper to do things >that way, but it is *not* a self-evident fact. Who decided that "self evident fact" was the operative standard here, I wonder. Pretty strong! We must remember this phrase later Henry :-) > Claims to that effect >would be much more credible if they included numbers, e.g. volume of >samples, number of missions involved, estimated cost based on existing >missions, etc. Worth working up. One model to shoot for would be, "Surveyor with a sample bucket and a return engine." My claim is that if Earth scientists had had the luxury of a few unmanned landings with good stereo photographic site documentation and a bucket of *ANY* rocks and soil taken therefrom, they'd have learned a hefty fraction of what we now know about the Moon's origins and composition. They'd certainly be in a good position to suggest followup trips; and they might still/even be doing them now. Question to ponder: Would you rather the Apollo 17 results were being obtained RIGHT NOW? It would mean it took many extra years to get them; but it would also mean we were still at work today. >It's interesting that some of the people who said that Apollo was a >ridiculously expensive way to get minimal results are now the ones who >are saying that Apollo completely explored the Moon, so we should forget >the Moon and press on to Mars. Bah. Claims to this effect would be much more credible if they included names and statements... -- Annex Canada now! We need the room, \) Tom Neff and who's going to stop us. (\ tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET
szabonj@ibmpa.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/20/89)
In article <1989Dec18.181605.7966@utzoo.uucp> kcarroll@utzoo.uucp (Kieran A. Carroll) writes: >Also, as Henry has pointed out earlier, the cost of Apollo itself >(i.e. developing the CM, SM and LEM, as well as the training facilities, >and support facilities required for supporting men in space) was quite >a bit less than the cost of (Apollo+Saturn). If a large number of >unmanned< >missions had been sent to the moon, they would have required a launch vehicle >too; maybe not as big as Saturn, but probably many more launches would have >been required in order to accomplish what Apollo did in six missions. And as I have pointed out, this reasoning is quite wrong. Automated missions use the same launchers everybody else (comsats, defense, etc.) uses. Manned missions require their own oversized, specialized launchers that are useless for commercial activities. The entire development cost of Saturn certainly should be included in the Apollo (including Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz) mission costs. Only a trivial fraction of the development costs of Titan et. al. need to be amortized over the automated planetary missions, since the same boosters have been used for hundreds of commercial and defense launches. This also means that automated missions have a much greater potential for spinoffs than manned missions, since the technology is correctly scaled and can be directly applied to commercial activities in space. >Do you attribute the cost of the launcher development to each program that >used the launch vehicle? Get a basic accounting textbook. Look up "amortization." >Sure, Apollo/Saturn was an expensive program. Too bad Congress decided to >throw away all the infrastructure the program had developed Congress, DoD, the scientific community, and the commercial sector, all rejected Saturn as oversized, overpriced, and useless for any productive activity in those communities. They were right. >it had been payed for; otherwise, follow-on manned missions could have >been cheap enough to satisfy even Van Allen. The recurring costs of Saturn missions would have been huge; probably greater than for Shuttle missions since Saturn was not at all reusable. There would have been no commercial customers, and only very limited DoD use. We would have a dozen Saturns sitting around rusting instead of a couple. ************ These opinions are not related to Big Blue's ******** --------------------------- Nick Szabo szabonj@ibmpa.tcspa.ibm.com uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj
kcarroll@utzoo.uucp (Kieran A. Carroll) (12/20/89)
steve@groucho.ucar.edu (Steve Emmerson) writes: > > henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes [referring to John McKernan's > assertion that it is "empirically evident" that the unmanned program > is more cost-effective than the manned program]: > > >My point is precisely that it's not. Remember, I am talking about getting > >the *same* results -- volume and diversity of samples, surface experiments > >emplaced, cores drilled, precision landings at pre-chosen sites, etc. -- > >not the far smaller and simpler missions undertaken by all unmanned landers > >to date. > > ... I believe it would be a mistake to attempt to > compare (assuming for the moment that one could ;-) manned and unmanned > exploration using as the judgement criteria the detailed and immediate > goals and results of the manned activities. It would be better, in my > opinion, to refer to a higher level of endevour, such as the quantity > and quality of the increase in our knowledge, or the potential for > further advancement in this area. > This is a good point, one that underlies (I think) much of the manned-vs-unmanned infighting. Henry's point is that a set of unmanned missions, designed to accomplish the same things that Apollo accomplished, might well have cost as much as Apollo did; thus, citing the great expense of Apollo when arguing that manned missions are inherently much more expensive than unmanned ones makes for a poor argument. Your point is that a less-expensive suite of unmanned missions might have accomplished the "higher-level" goals of Apollo, just as well as did the expensive manned ones. Of course, this depends on the "high-level goals" that are involved. There are at least three sets of high-level goals that were satisfied by Apollo. The goals that motivated Kennedy et al. to pay for Apollo was (to quote a previous poster) "geo-political muscle-flexing", or striving for national prestige through highly visible technical accomplishments, in order to win support for America's ideology over the Soviet one. The goals that were being pursued by the engineers that "sold" Apollo to the administration (Von Braun and friends, and their American proteges) were exploration of the moon, and development of the infrastructure with which space stations, lunar bases, manned Mars missions and the like could be supported. In addition, there were space scientists involved in Apollo (it's not clear to me whether they were among the original players, or were enlisted after the program had been "sold", in order to provide additional justification for the program; or perhaps just because adding space science wouldn't cost much more, and so why not allow the scientists aboard?). Their goal was to carry out research of various forms -- into the nature of the moon, mostly. As many have argued, there's no way that an unmanned exploration program could have satisfied the first set of goals in the same way that Apollo did. Pictures sent back by robots probes make a splash, then disappear without a trace (except among the space addicts, and a few scientists). After all, the USSR was the first to send robot probes to the moon, but "the-man-in-the-street" sure doesn't remember it (and wouldn't care, if you told him). How many people do you think still remember, on the other hand, that "an American was the first person to walk on the moon"? Today we tend to dismiss the first set of goals as having been unimportant, a waste of time and money to try to accomplish. However, they seem to have been pretty significant at the time -- I suppose that a couple of more decades of lessening international tensions has changed the outlook of people in the US (not to mention things like Vietnam). Thus, people these days seem to act as if the second and third sets of goals were the actual drivers of the program. Not only that, but the manned-spaceflight enthusiasts (myself included) judge the second set as being the "truly important" goals, with the third set being less significant; Van Allen and company, on the other hand, discount the second set of goals >entirely<, and tend to proclaim the third set as the only reason for having gone to the moon. Boy, it's no wonder people are getting nasty in their arguments! Manned-vs-unmanned is arguing the wrong question; more important is the question of "What should we be trying to accomplish in space?" Once we've sorted that out, the areas in which manned and unmanned spaceflight can contribute will be quite obvious. -- Kieran A. Carroll @ U of Toronto Aerospace Institute uunet!attcan!utzoo!kcarroll kcarroll@zoo.toronto.edu
kamidon@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Keith Amidon) (12/21/89)
I have avoided the manned vs unmanned debate now for a long time, but
I've decided to get my two cents in since it looks like this thread is
never EVER going to die. In my opinion neither one is better than the
other because they both have their good and bad points. There are
situations in which manned is better and situations in which unmanned
is better. If the mission matches the approach used everything is
great. The problem arises when the wrong approach is used. Examples
of where I feel each approach is appropriate follow:
Unmanned: Survey/Photographic Mission
Simple sampling missions (this could include returns)
Manned: Complex sampling missions
With advanced enough robotics and AI, everything could be done with
unmanned missions. However, I feel that there is a fundamental problem
with this. Scientific knowledge gained through space exploration is
extremely important. However, I believe that we need to develop a
permanent manned presence in space. The earth is simply too small a
basket to keep all our fragile eggs in. Therefore, we need missions
with a manned component to develop these capabilities. Besides,
the life-science researchers I'm sure would like to have data on how
humans and other organisms live/function in space, and this data could
be just as important to us as the composition of Mars rock etc.
Flame me if you want, but this is my position on the matter.
Keith Amidon -- kamidon@caen.engin.umich.edu