Giga Games 1/Giga Games.iso/net/vir_real/papers/carlson.vrt

Text File | 1993-06-20 | 12.4 KB | 229 lines

91-01/Mars.VR.story
From: [e-mail] (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
[phone]
[e-mail]


[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]