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areoformyesterday at 9:37 PM1 replyview on HN

Yes, and more!

    > Apollo was over three orders of magnitude more efficient in producing scientific papers per day of fieldwork than are the MERs. This is essentially the same as Squyres’ (2005) intuitive estimate given above, and is consistent with the more quantitative analogue fieldwork tests reported by Snook et al. (2007).
Scientific papers are a pretty poor measure of productivity so here's another one. We know about the existence of He-3 thanks to samples brought back from astronauts on the moon. Astronauts setup fiddly UV telescope experiments on the moon, trying to set up a gravimeter to measure gravitational waves, digging into the soil to put explosive charges at different ranges for seismic measurement of the moon's subsurface... They were extremely productive. Most of what we know about the moon happened thanks to the 12 days spent on the lunar surface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Ultraviolet_Camera/Spectro...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Surface_Gravimeter


Replies

physiclestoday at 12:38 AM

I’ve wondered for years if this could be quantified. Three orders of magnitude totally justifies the cost, if you care about science.