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I'm all in favour of space travel. But purely from a scientific standpoint, what can be done by sending people to Mars that can't be done by sending probes?

EDIT: To clarify (as in the comments), I meant what scientific tests/etc. do we want to do now that we can't with current probe/rover technology, but that we could feasibly do if we sent a person there. I'm not entirely sure if this is too broad or not.

Muzer
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    This is a duplicate of What can an astronaut do better than the Curiosity rover? which was closed as too broad. This one isn't any more specific, I'm afraid. For example, should we compare human capabilities only with current technological capabilities? In that case, e.g. an astronaut can walk many times the speed of any rover we ever sent on Mars. So it's not only about the type of science, but also its quantity, decreasing time interval and/or increasing range between sampling,... Which enables other types of science being done. And so on. – TildalWave Aug 13 '15 at 15:29
  • Ah, yes, I didn't find that one (I did look!), clearly I was using the wrong search terms. I think I was thinking specifically what scientific tests do we want to do on Mars but can't until we get people up there. But you might be right, there could be so many things that it can't be answered. – Muzer Aug 13 '15 at 15:33
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    Mainly things we don't know we'd want to do until we do send people there. So it's about mission adaptability / flexibility. But also everything that rovers and landers are already doing, but with more sample points. So it's also about quantity, which drives science data reliability / quality. Rovers also won't tell you how something feels like, so also about human experience. Etc. – TildalWave Aug 13 '15 at 15:37
  • Indeed, but the human experience side is probably not all that scientific. Correct me if I'm wrong! Your other points make sense though. – Muzer Aug 13 '15 at 15:45
  • It is scientific in colonization potential sense. And human psychology will be a huge factor in it, too. There's also this distinct possibility that Mars might have or still does support life as we don't know it, something that hardware won't be taught to recognize, but boots on the ground might. TL;DR version is that the use of hardware presumes that we already know what science we'd want to do. People can adapt to new circumstances, rovers rarely (tho it is possible, with the help of humans of course). – TildalWave Aug 13 '15 at 15:48
  • OK, that makes sense. Going back to your earlier point, is it really the case that you don't know what science you might want to do until you're there? I mean, were the moon missions partially improvised? I'm not sure I can believe that. – Muzer Aug 13 '15 at 15:49
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    That would be an interesting separate question, but yes, to a degree, they were improvised, sure. There wouldn't be any point in doing science up there if we already knew exactly what to expect. – TildalWave Aug 13 '15 at 15:53
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    A single field geologist could've walked the distance Curiosity has traveled during 3 years IN ONE DAY! And drill much more often, and collect samples to return to Earth, and choose much better samples. Especially if she had a wagon with some instruments to drag along manually. Curiosity gets only one set of commands per day, at best. – LocalFluff Aug 14 '15 at 11:52
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    These are not my words; I read them somewhere on the 'net years ago. To my best recollection, it went something like this: "Today the Mars science team announced results from the Mars rovers. After days of navigating to a rock and hours of drilling by the rover, followed by more days of analysis on the ground, those Mars scientists announced that the rock was volcanic. Now imagine Harrison Schmitt on Mars. With a few steps he would have reached the rock. With one whack of his hammer and a few seconds of analysis, he would have deemed the rock to be volcanic." – David Hammen Aug 14 '15 at 14:12
  • @LocalFluff and David Hammen that's interesting. That would probably make a good answer to me... – Muzer Aug 14 '15 at 14:22
  • The effects of listening to nothing but disco for 600 sols. – Aron Aug 14 '15 at 19:18
  • There are ways to, or at least ideas about how to, mitigate time latency, to create "simulated real time", that might lessen the difference between an interplanetary robot and an astronaut on site. Here's a von Kármán lecture about it. (This and virtual reality in general might be a deadly blow to all human spaceflight, I think movies and games already have contributed to decreasing people's interest in it since the happy days of the spacerace). – LocalFluff Aug 15 '15 at 08:14
  • Why do a sample return mission? What would happen to those samples? Doing the lab work on Mars that would otherwise require sending samples back to Earth. Of course that means landing more than just humans - it means delivering a whole lot of equipment for them to use. – Anthony X Dec 18 '16 at 16:16
  • Quantity is not just about "how many samples do we get". It also matters for experiments where negative results are an overwhelming majority. Say, we want to test if plant seeds can survive the space travel. We ballpark (guessing here) about 0.5% of seeds may survive. That means one in 200 seeds will produce crop that then can be used to start the plantation. A lander will be able to test growth of maybe 50 seeds tops, and send the expectable "all seeds dead." Not a very interesting result. If humans plant 5,000 - we're getting some good numbers. – SF. Dec 19 '16 at 02:40

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I think you probably could do the same science with rovers and robots for a lot of the things. But by sending humans to Mars you also get to study the humans, and how their bodies cope on Mars.

It is also an engineering challenge. Science deals with data and a lot of the theoretical side and the new discoveries. But the engineering that goes into a mission like taking people to Mars is also going to make a lot of discoveries about what really works and about how to keep people alive in long-duration space flight, and landing and taking off from another planet. I think even if there is no scientific value this probably would be a worthwhile mission just for the discoveries you could make by doing a manned mission to Mars as an engineering challenge.

user
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