Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Possibly, but this may be a critical hardware failure. It's not like astronauts that have a critical hardware failure can run to CompMARS and buy a replacement. A catastrophic failure on Spirit means it quits working. For humans, it means death.
There's only so much you can do to help a robotic probe or a landing party from so far away. Failures like this should underline just how difficult and unpredictably problematic space exploration can be. Take this as a cautionary note, not a rallying cry to send people to Mars.
It's all fun and games until somebody loses and dies.
A couple of points. First, explorers have always risked their lives. How many of the early explorers that travelled across the Atlantic Ocean in search of the new world die enroute? It's only in modern times that we seem to think that if there's any chance that someone could die doing something that we shouldn't do it.
Next, part of the problem with the rovers is that they have to be technologically complex enough to function by themselves without someone there to help take care of them. It is simply true that the technology needed to keep someone alive on Mars isn't that complex. It is, essentially, 1960s or 1970s technology. To make a rover function and perform various experiments, it takes more like 1990s technology. Sure, advanced 'toys' could be taken up with a manned flight, but then if something went wrong with them, there would be a practical way to try to figure out what.
The simple truth is that we already have the technology to send a manned space flight to Mars and back. We could do it within the next 5 to 10 years. But it couldn't be done the way that NASA seems to like to do things, packing as much bleeding edge technology in as possible. (Note that right now, for space, 1990s technology
is bleeding edge.) Of course, there a small matter of being willing to invest the money that it would take either way.
In any event, I hope that they can figure out what's going wrong with Spirit, eventually. I've heard that the problems with Spirit have now been put on the back burner until they get Opportunity down.
(Oh, just as a final note, I took this as a 'rallying cry to send people to Mars', rather than as a 'cautionary note', simply because I've heard so many people talking about how perfect the robotic space program is, and that there's
no need to send people to Mars because robots can do it all, and so on. I am a human space program advocate. However, that said, I do understand that this must also be taken as a cautionary note.)
