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Posted by tourdemars to Technology at March 30, 2004 11:33 PM
A British engineer said Tuesday that future space missions might be best undertaken by teams of cooperating robots. James Law, a doctoral candidate at England's Open University, noted despite the successes of probes such as Europe's Mars Express orbiter and NASA's twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, only five of the past 17 spacecraft sent to Mars have survived to perform their missions.TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.marsnews.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/352
So at approximate 800 million per mission that equates to 4 billion for success and 9.6 billion in failures grand total spent 13.6 billion thus far. If the odd are not improved for success and we plan on launching missions every 2 years for the next 20 to 30 that would if no inflation be 8 billion for 20 yrs. and 12 billion for 30 totals with failed units of approximate missions of 70.6% for a 5.65 billion at 20 yrs. and for 30 yrs that figure would be 8.47 billion dollars down the sink hole of space exploration with robotic missions to Mars.
Though manned flight at current is more expense and dangerous the pay back is immediate with less launches and with a higher success rate.
So which is cheaper in the long run? Can we wait so long for man to do the exploring when NASA still needs to develope the CEV and rocket to take us there?
Posted by: Harold LaValley at March 31, 2004 07:05 AM