I think it could be worthwhile to travel to Mars orbit for scientific exploration. Because though we can do a lot with rovers controlled from Earth, and the bandwidth may go up to the point where we can control them pretty well especially with a lot of in built smarts on the rover itself - still - humans "on the spot" in orbit making decisions might speed things up a lot.
I doubt if here is anything that we can only do with humans on the spot. But we could do it more quickly. With present day or near future technology.
Humans in orbit can control rovers anywhere on the surface of Mars with close up telepresence. Each person controlling maybe three or more teams of rovers on the surface. A bit like the game civilization as the numbers of rovers increase. You'd experience what it's like on the surface via HD streaming enhanced vision, and you'd do all the interesting jobs, leaving the rovers to do the boring stuff.
In orbit is the natural place to be or on one of its two moons, for a mission like this. Plus if searching for life there, you absolutely must not bring Earth life to Mars or you may just find life you brought there yourself. So for as long as it is possible there are habitats for Earth life on the present day Mars surface, then it doesn't make a lot of planetary protection sense to have the humans on the surface.
I don't think human landing on Mars will pass planetary protection in the next couple of decades at least. And the far most interesting scenario is if Mars does have habitats for present day life on the surface, but if that happens, and especially if there is Mars evolved life in them - then human landings would surely be delayed indefinitely until we find out more.
So - I see travel to Mars orbit as potentially worthwhile for scientific reasons. Travel to the surface less so, may be ruled out for planetary protection reasons.
Now it's not necessarily even faster to do human exploration from orbit like this. Because you have to factor in that for that 100 billion dollar human mission you could do a hundred 1 billion rover misisons, or 200 half billion ones, or send thousands or tens of thousands of tiny nanosats to Mars. Plus our rovers will get more autonomous, the bandwidth will also increase to the point where you have live video feed and can control your rovers in close to real time, sometimes only a few minutes of delay, instead of once a day, all for far less than the cost of a human mission to Mars orbit.
Probably a combination of the two is best - lots of robots, and also a few humans in orbit to do the most challenging and interesting decision making experiments and explorations.
As for export from the surface - well any minerals or metals would surely be easier to mine in space and export from near earth asteroids. And mining on Mars is hard as the ground is porous to some depth through asteroid impact "gardening" and water can't be used as a lubricant because it immediately boils away. Samples would be taken through robotic "moles". And gravity doesn't really help with transport - in asteroid mining you just need one delta v boost to set your payload moving towards where you want it to go, and another to stop it. Far easier once the technology is developed.
There's also the possibility of using ice in its moon Deimos. Which is valuable for both water, and rocket fuel. Though it is quite deep in the Mars gravitational well - still - turns out it is not that hard to supply ice to LEO from Deimos. Far easier than supply from Earth.
It might be competitive with ice from the Moon. But that idea of mining Deimos does go back to before the discovery of the lunar ice deposits. I think it depends a lot on details which we don't know yet. For instance we don't even know for sure that Deimos has any ice, and don't know much about the lunar ice deposits. And it might be a precarious business model because you just need a low cost way to transfer water from Earth to orbit, at dollars per ton, which is not impossible through various ideas such as just firing it into orbit, and orbital airships - and then your space ice mining company will immediately go out of business. So I think it is a bit of a commercial risk, depending how quickly you can get it underway. There's also the question of whether and how you can own space resources.
There's also the possibility of growing plants and food. In orbit using the water ice and other resources from Deimos perhaps (which may also have asteroid originated organics). But that's got the same issue as water ice mining - what if it becomes easy to do low cost export of food from Earth to space in the near future? So it might be a short term thing, for a decade or two, then the industry is abandoned.
On the other hand, for both of these, if somehow water extraction or plant growing can be automated and if it can somehow work more easily in space conditions (some benefit of the low g, e.g. easy to use thin film mirrors or whatever) then you could imagine it being worth doing. But that is into science fiction territory or far future guesses. A bit like the 1960s and 1970s guesses about what the world would be like in the twenty first century.
So hard to extrapolate about other things like food, water, minerals.
I see scientific exploration as the most likely and the enduring reason that lasts through everything else. Because that lasts indefinitely. We have had science research stations in Antarctica for decades and there is not the slightest sign that they are running out of things to do of great interest in scientific exploration. Mars would be of endless interest similarly for scientific exploration. And if we found exobiology there, it would be of tremendous interest.
There could always be new discoveries of course that turn this around. But those also would come out of the scientific exploration so that seems the place to start whatever.
As for tourists - I imagine it as like tourists in Antarctica. Somewhat specialized, but once travel gets easier you may get many people who want to go to Mars orbit and visit Phobos and Deimos and explore the surface directly via telepresence, instead of the more likely tourist destination of the Moon, and orbital hotels in LEO - especially as travel times go down and prices go down.
See also: my science blog post: To Explore Mars With Likes Of Occulus Rift & Virtuix Omni - From Mars Capture Orbit, Phobos Or Deimos
For travel getting easier, see Projects To Get To Space As Easily As We Cross Oceans - A Billion Flights A Year Perhaps - Will We Be Ready?
I doubt if here is anything that we can only do with humans on the spot. But we could do it more quickly. With present day or near future technology.
Humans in orbit can control rovers anywhere on the surface of Mars with close up telepresence. Each person controlling maybe three or more teams of rovers on the surface. A bit like the game civilization as the numbers of rovers increase. You'd experience what it's like on the surface via HD streaming enhanced vision, and you'd do all the interesting jobs, leaving the rovers to do the boring stuff.
In orbit is the natural place to be or on one of its two moons, for a mission like this. Plus if searching for life there, you absolutely must not bring Earth life to Mars or you may just find life you brought there yourself. So for as long as it is possible there are habitats for Earth life on the present day Mars surface, then it doesn't make a lot of planetary protection sense to have the humans on the surface.
I don't think human landing on Mars will pass planetary protection in the next couple of decades at least. And the far most interesting scenario is if Mars does have habitats for present day life on the surface, but if that happens, and especially if there is Mars evolved life in them - then human landings would surely be delayed indefinitely until we find out more.
So - I see travel to Mars orbit as potentially worthwhile for scientific reasons. Travel to the surface less so, may be ruled out for planetary protection reasons.
Now it's not necessarily even faster to do human exploration from orbit like this. Because you have to factor in that for that 100 billion dollar human mission you could do a hundred 1 billion rover misisons, or 200 half billion ones, or send thousands or tens of thousands of tiny nanosats to Mars. Plus our rovers will get more autonomous, the bandwidth will also increase to the point where you have live video feed and can control your rovers in close to real time, sometimes only a few minutes of delay, instead of once a day, all for far less than the cost of a human mission to Mars orbit.
Probably a combination of the two is best - lots of robots, and also a few humans in orbit to do the most challenging and interesting decision making experiments and explorations.
As for export from the surface - well any minerals or metals would surely be easier to mine in space and export from near earth asteroids. And mining on Mars is hard as the ground is porous to some depth through asteroid impact "gardening" and water can't be used as a lubricant because it immediately boils away. Samples would be taken through robotic "moles". And gravity doesn't really help with transport - in asteroid mining you just need one delta v boost to set your payload moving towards where you want it to go, and another to stop it. Far easier once the technology is developed.
There's also the possibility of using ice in its moon Deimos. Which is valuable for both water, and rocket fuel. Though it is quite deep in the Mars gravitational well - still - turns out it is not that hard to supply ice to LEO from Deimos. Far easier than supply from Earth.
It might be competitive with ice from the Moon. But that idea of mining Deimos does go back to before the discovery of the lunar ice deposits. I think it depends a lot on details which we don't know yet. For instance we don't even know for sure that Deimos has any ice, and don't know much about the lunar ice deposits. And it might be a precarious business model because you just need a low cost way to transfer water from Earth to orbit, at dollars per ton, which is not impossible through various ideas such as just firing it into orbit, and orbital airships - and then your space ice mining company will immediately go out of business. So I think it is a bit of a commercial risk, depending how quickly you can get it underway. There's also the question of whether and how you can own space resources.
There's also the possibility of growing plants and food. In orbit using the water ice and other resources from Deimos perhaps (which may also have asteroid originated organics). But that's got the same issue as water ice mining - what if it becomes easy to do low cost export of food from Earth to space in the near future? So it might be a short term thing, for a decade or two, then the industry is abandoned.
On the other hand, for both of these, if somehow water extraction or plant growing can be automated and if it can somehow work more easily in space conditions (some benefit of the low g, e.g. easy to use thin film mirrors or whatever) then you could imagine it being worth doing. But that is into science fiction territory or far future guesses. A bit like the 1960s and 1970s guesses about what the world would be like in the twenty first century.
So hard to extrapolate about other things like food, water, minerals.
I see scientific exploration as the most likely and the enduring reason that lasts through everything else. Because that lasts indefinitely. We have had science research stations in Antarctica for decades and there is not the slightest sign that they are running out of things to do of great interest in scientific exploration. Mars would be of endless interest similarly for scientific exploration. And if we found exobiology there, it would be of tremendous interest.
There could always be new discoveries of course that turn this around. But those also would come out of the scientific exploration so that seems the place to start whatever.
As for tourists - I imagine it as like tourists in Antarctica. Somewhat specialized, but once travel gets easier you may get many people who want to go to Mars orbit and visit Phobos and Deimos and explore the surface directly via telepresence, instead of the more likely tourist destination of the Moon, and orbital hotels in LEO - especially as travel times go down and prices go down.
See also: my science blog post: To Explore Mars With Likes Of Occulus Rift & Virtuix Omni - From Mars Capture Orbit, Phobos Or Deimos
For travel getting easier, see Projects To Get To Space As Easily As We Cross Oceans - A Billion Flights A Year Perhaps - Will We Be Ready?
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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