Virtual Mars?

 91-01/Mars.VR.story

From: scarlson@csa1.lbl.gov (Shawn Carlson)

Subject: Virtual Mars

Date: Tue, 15 Jan 91 01:52:36 GMT

Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley CA

        What follows is an article I wrote for "the Humanist" 

magazine.  I'm posting it here to hopefully spark discussion about 

using Virtual Worlds techniques for extraterrestrial 

exploration.  (Expected publication date - March 1991.)  What do 

you think about the idea?  How should such a mission be designed? 

                                                        -- S.C.

=========================================================

                              Virtual Mars?

                           Shawn Carlson, Ph.D. 

                            January 1st, 1991

     Exploration is the hallmark of humanity- the great shaper of 

our history,  the great motivater of our kind.  I don't have to 

imagine the excitement most Spaniards felt when Columbus 

returned with a cargo hold full of exotic treasures from the New 

World.  Although I was only nine, I remember vividly the awesome 

exhilaration I felt while staring into a black and white picture 

tube and watching as Neil Armstrong took control from a 

faltering guidance computer and coolly landed the Eagle on the 

surface of a new world.  Perhaps the noblest thing about our 

species, the most uniquely "human" quality of our experience, is 

the purity of our lusts; for life, for knowledge, and for challenges 

that force us to go beyond ourselves. We thrive on- we need great 

adventures. 

     But since our technology opened up the frontier of space, 

adventures in the grand tradition have been harder to get off the 

ground; sadly, there have been damn few since NASA's finest hour.

     Recently there has been a push to make a mission to Mars 

humankind's next great voyage.  This effort has gained the 

administration's favor.President Bush has personally called for 

the creation of a manned Mars program.  However, Congress has 

been skeptical of, if not hostile to, the plan.  NASA's sterling 

image, so magnificently polished in the Apollo days, has been 

tarnished by the Challenger disaster, the Hubble Telescope 

debacle,and a crippling sequence of design errors uncovered in 

the plans of the proposed space station.  This combined with the 

attached $500 billion price tag has made Congress reluctant to 

loosen the nation's purse strings for putting people on Mars. 

     However, despite NASA's (I hope) transitory incompetence and 

Congress's typical recalcitrance, I believe that Mars looms too 

big in our imaginations for the human odyssey not to draw us 

there.  It is the next logical great space adventure.  The question 

then is not so much when are we going, but how should such a 

mission be designed to best serve humanity?

     Many space advocates assert that a Mars mission should be 

manned and give noble reasons for why we should commit the 

lives of an international crew to the two to four year journey.  

They argue that the huge international collaboration of talented 

technologists needed to land 30 folks on Mars for 40 days (the 

typical scenario) would help bring the world together, open 

vistas of multinational cooperation and foster transcultural 

understanding.  Further,they hope that seeing Soviets and 

Americans working glove in glove on Mars would so inflate the 

world with the spirit of cooperation that it would never again 

flatten into war.  

     Other exploration enthusiasts prefer sending robots in lieu of 

people.  They believe the political benefits of a manned mission 

have been oversold and point out that any mission would itself be 

only a symbol.  Real political progress, they argue, must be made 

on the ground by international cooperation.  However, such 

cooperation could head-up either a human or mechanized mission 

equally well.  Further, they maintain that robot reconnaissance of 

Mars is a better option because it's much cheaper and far safer 

than sending people. 

     Indeed, robots could explore Mars for far less money because 

they don't need any of the myriad of environmental supports we 

require to sustain our biological frailties.  Most of the money for 

a human mission would go just into keeping the astronauts alive.  

Every dollar so spent would be a dollar not used on science, every 

kilogram of payload so dedicated would be a kilogram taken from 

sophisticated instruments of exploration.  In short, astronauts 

would only get in the way of the science- we would learn more 

for a lot less money without them. 

     A robot mission would safeguard more than just astronauts.  

After all,if a Mars bound robot "bought it" the nation would cross 

its arms and cock a collective eyebrow at NASA.  But if people 

died in space the whole Mars program would likely die with them.  

And this, I fear, would be a very real possibility.  Despite 

extensive ground maintenance between each flight, the multi-

billion dollar space shuttles routinely break down in orbit- 

toilets clog, cooling vents fail, computers burn out. . .  In a 

mission lasting just a week or so, and which can be aborted with 

a few hours notice, these failures are merely annoying.  However, 

a series of uncorrectable annoyances appearing throughout a two 

to four year voyage, which cannot be aborted and from which 

there is no hope of rescue, could well cascade into a fatal 

catastrophe before the astronauts could get home.  Also, the 

fragments of Challenger now littering the ocean floor don't 

exactly inspire confidence in NASA's talents in safety 

engineering either.  

     However, there is one crucial place where astronauts totally 

outshine their mechanical competition- public thrills.  Even if 

our robot alternates were as cute as R2-D2 they just wouldn't 

have the same public appeal as an international gaggle of scruffy 

space-suited ruffians toasting marshmallows on the Martian 

outback.  And let's face it, while every epic voyage throughout 

history has been justified with copious platitudes about the 

innate nobility of the human spirit that's not why they happened.  

Adventures have never been primarily moral- they have been 

sensual!  The discovery, the achievement, mastering the 

unexpected, risking and winning- these are the psychological 

primers of the experience, but it is the thrill we seek.  To put it 

crassly,we are willing to spend billions to indulge in a few 

rounds of orgiastic self congratulatory backslapping.  If going to 

the Moon didn't make people feel good we never would have done 

it.  Indeed, history shows that the greatness of any "great 

adventure" is set by how deeply and completely it thrills the 

masses who bankrolled the damn thing, and that the money keeps 

coming only so long as people get their dollar's worth of 

excitement.  

     Therefore, the ideal mission would blend the thrill of human 

exploration with the safety and cost effectiveness of robot 

surrogates. Impossible?  Not anymore.  In fact, I believe that now 

maturing technologies make it inevitable.

     Suppose we begin our Martian adventure by deploying a few 

satellites to take high resolution pictures of the entire surface 

of Mars.  The second  part begins when a mother craft carrying a 

brood of sophisticated robot explorers is launched.  Upon arrival, 

the mother settles into orbit and, as ordered from the earth, 

dispatches her children to perform many missions each featuring 

the landing of a laboratory craft and several reconnaissance  

vehicles at some particularly interesting place.  The laboratory's 

computer controls the collection and analysis of its rovers' booty 

and transmits the results to the mother ship which in turn relays 

it to a gang of a hand wringing gray-beardsback on earth.  

     So far it sounds just like a robot mission, right?  Here's the 

new idea.Even though people would have never physically been 

there, the sites for robot exploration would have been chosen by 

direct human exploration of Mars!

     Here's how.  Imagine you've completed one week of training in 

geology and planet morphology at NASA.  You're not an astronaut, 

just an intelligent someone with a compulsion for adventure. 

You've have been assigned  to explore sector 15A027PC- about a 

thousand square miles of Mars.  You strap yourself into a 

remarkable vehicle and take a breath as you push the button 

marked"Launch Sequence Initializer".  The belly of the mother 

craft opens up and you see Mars beneath you for the first time.  

Your rockets kick in, thrusting you back into your chair as you 

descend rapidly.  Your position appears on the overhead monitor 

as your approach vector hones you in on your assigned area. Once 

there, you float 500 meters above the surface buzzing over 

breathtaking terrain never before seen. Your mind and your 

sensual experience glides above Mars, yet your body is actually 

still on earth.  You are flying a simulator and exploring a 

computer generated "virtual world" that blends those high 

resolution satellite photos into moving 3-D images and is 

therefore identical in every detail to the real Martian surface.  

You look out of your port window to see Phobos, Mars' largest 

moon, just peeking over the horizon.  You hear the Martian wind 

blowing over your cockpit.  You feel your craft move, bank and 

roll as you change course and speed.  You see an ancient and now 

barren river bed cutting through the valley below you.  To your 

left you spot a fascinating possibility. There, about 1000 meters 

away, is a large rocky overhang which completely shields part of 

the river bed from the sun.  Could some ancient form of life have 

once clung to those rocks when the river coursed though this 

valley?  Could that overhang have protected the evidence of that 

life until now?  You log your discovery and fly on.  Later, NASA 

scientists will confirm it and send their intrepid robots to 

investigate. This Virtual World technology exist to impressive 

extent already. The Mars simulator I'm postulating is likely only a 

few years away.

     Human exploration of a virtual Mars has important advantages 

over human exploration of the real one.  Yes, it's safer and much 

less costly, but it's also a much more efficient.  By breaking up 

the surface into a thousands of pieces the whole of Mars could be 

searched by an army of volunteer explorers at our leisure.  

Important sites could be carefully selected and scrutinized, 

instead of having to do everything with 30 over worked space-

suited explorers in only 40 days.  

     But what's most important about all this is how it opens 

extraterrestrial exploration to all of us, and that is very 

exciting!  You won't have to be physically perfect with a lifetime 

of dedicated training to explore strange new worlds.  Any 

intelligent person would be able to do it. When teenagers and 

grandparents, waitresses and executives, the poor, the 

handicapped and the advantaged can queue up to make original 

discoveries about the earth's red sister the dividends to science 

and society will be incalculable.  When we take space exploration 

out of the theoretical and make it part of peoples lives, let them 

"touch the magic", we will turn kids on to scientific carriers and 

generate a new public enthusiasm for the powers of technology 

which will benefit humanity far into the future.  How naive, 

wasteful and even useless it seems to send a few people to Mars 

when we can in a real way bring the entire planet home to 

everyone.

     Let's liberate ourselves from the medieval notions of chivalry 

that have guided our explorations for a thousand years.  

Exploration, the experience of some new place, no longer requires 

the explorer to physically travel there.  It's time to bring our 

fantastic technological prowess to bear on opening up the cosmos 

to all of us, to turn kids on to science as never before possible 

and instill in humanity a sense of the true majesty of space 

exploration.  

     So keep your fingers crossed and your flight suit pressed.  The 

next "new world" adventures just might be waiting for you.             

  

END

"Never attribute to malice what incompetence is sufficient to 

explain."

Shawn Carlson

50/232      

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

Berkeley, CA 94720

(415) 486-7433

scarlson@csa1.lbl.gov

[Moderator's note:  Mike McGreevy of NASA Ames Research Center 

has also touted the ability of virtual worlds to deliver 

experiences not available to manned spaceflight, or inappropriate 

for it (like extreme environments).  If someone would get Mike on 

here, we could have a swell dialogue.  Thanks.  -- Bob]