Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Robots - half the science for 1% of the cost???

re: Robots - half the science for 1% of the cost???
Chris Vancil — (archived)

Hum, I think it was Park you're talking about. You realize Park has as much to gain by quoting inflated numbers for costs as Zubrin has for quoting low balled numbers for costs of manned missions. Being a scientist doesn't make you correct.

About 80 billion is a "reasonable" guess at a manned mission to Mars or about 100 times the MER costs and about 1 human (geologist) day equals 100 robot days of exploration. This is were my numbers come from. Sure there guesses, but based on interviews with geologists, other explorational scientists and robotic engineers and the realization that government funded projects easily go over budget.

"For most remote sensing science operations, my estimate is that robots are a zillion times MORE cost effective than humans (and that's not a wild guess)." and that is not an exageration? What are you basing this on?

You are I think are young. When Apollo astronauts poked cameras against windows and took images of Earth they were in fact advancing the field of remote sensing just as Telestar was used to advance robotic telecommunications when we live broadcast for the first time ever. Once long ago images were literally faxed back to us from spacecraft.

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