NASA suggests robotic return to the Moon A “return to the Moon” would need an almost unimaginable change in political thinking about the cost of space programs, but that doesn’t stop dreamers from dreaming. A group of researchers that includes members from NASA, Caltech’s JPL, Lockheed-Martin and a handful of high-profile institutions have proposed a human return to …
The paper is fairly frank about this:
The proposed science objectives do not require teleoperation of a rover from L2 since this science might be better accomplished with the assistance of a human crew on the surface or less effectively via control from Earth using a relay satellite at L2. However, by using teleoperation of rovers by astronauts at L2, this mission would demonstrate human “virtual presence” from orbit to explore and deploy sophisticated science instrumentation on an extraterrestrial body (see also Lester and Thronson 2011b)
Naively I feel quite confident that human virtual presence would work from orbit without needing to see it expensively demonstrated - this isn't wouldn't be like the decision to go "all-up" with Apollo 4 where an entire system was being tested for the first time, but instead taking things we already do well on and from Earth and doing them off-Earth. And while having a 0.4s signal RTT is better than a 2.4s one from Earth the latter seems usably fast at likely robot speeds - it's not like trying to control stuff on another planet.
And what are those little red triangles all about.
NASA is playing a 2-2-2 lineup?
Note this has 2 good point.
Experience of humans at the L2 point, which *could* be used as a staging point for various destinations outside Earth/Moon space
Experience of teleoperation which could be useful if you went to one of the Martian moons *without* a full scale Mars landing. IIRC they are so small that it's less a landing and more a *docking* given their escape velocity.
Yes but if there is a cat there, as it's near as dammit a vacuum, the temperature ranges from lethally cold to lethally hot and the radiation levels are fierce, it'll definately be dead. Probably quite messily so, in an asphyxiated, blood-boiling, exploded, fried, frozen and irradiated sort of manner.
Maybe it's not such a great name?
You'd need that to be able to communicate with the south polar area anyway - which means that 75% of the time you won't be able to communicate with it unless there's a set of orbiting comms sats (this was the proposed solution 40 years ago for darkside apollo missions)
31 days life support isn't much of an issue. 31 days outside of the shielding provided by Earth's magnetosphere is a different matter with current space tech. Nothing we have _and which can be lifted that far with current tech_ will provide sufficient shielding. Water is the best moderator but it's HEAVY.
FWIW, being in the path of a small-to-average solar flare will kill any unshielded organism, but even without those there are much higher energy bursts popping in from all directions - the longer someone's out there the more likely it becomes that something will get zapped and go cancerous.
Those big-ass space navy ships so beloved by SF have a lot of practicality in terms of protecting the meatsacks inside.
Why send a meatsack to do a robot's job?
Sure you want a person there if you're making a political statement or trying to make good TV (playing golf etc), but when it comes to doing science the robots can do it as well - or even better - for less money.
About the only win in sending a man to the moon in the 60s was that it beat the Russians at something.
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