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Manned Mars Mission Some Way Off
10,9,8,7... Count Down Aborted writes "The BBC brings some perspective to the manned mission to Mars debate recently reinvigorated by the discovery of vast H2O ice reserves on Mars. Basically, they list many of the reasons (e.g. psychological, political, monetary, and technological) why we must proceed very carefully and slowly despite the significance of such a mission if it were successful. They also raised the interesting question, "Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?"" Update: 05/28 14:28 GMT by H : Another good link is on USA Today.
"Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?""
Well, what about me, a large stack of books and my laptop?
I don't think I would hesitate when asked!
...In other news, Richard Stallman and Santa Clause are fat guys with beards.
Film at 11.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I vote to send the Survivors teams as they are experienced in survival techniques as shown on TV. ;)
Return the bells of Balangiga.
From the article: "The crew will have to be specially selected to be able to cope. Should it be a mixed crew or all men, or all women? "
For some reason I think that it shouldn't be all women... Maybe one geek guy and the rest of the crew women?
I'm not even sure I've found any "intelligent force" in Europe, let alone expecting to find it on Mars.
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
"Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?"
Well, we all know who will get all the votes!...
CowboyNeal!
[alk]
> Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?
Oh, too easy! The MPAA and the RIAA, of course!
"Old man yells at systemd"
The crew:
Gather 16 random trolls. Make a pseudo-forum generating random articles, add some fp bots and plenty of p0rn and you're almost there.
We may have a problem with reproduction though.
Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?
Definately Keanu Reeves wearing some cool sunglasses. Definately not Tom Hanks crying and being sentimental like a big girl.
I vote for John Katz and Bill Gates.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
As evryone knows, Mars needs women, not men... geez, when will the male centric NASA get it right!?
And if this person did become the first human to stand on the red soil of Mars, what would they say?
Got some spare change?
Of course, the answer to who we send is obvious -- We should send an ethnically-diverse "Power Rangers" like team to Mars, because that way, we can sell action figures and color-changing cups at Burger King. We should send an African bush man that speaks in grunts and clicks, along with an Eskimo, an Aboriginie, and perhaps a midg^H^H^H^Hsmall person, because sending qualified engineers and scientists from the actual country footing the bill for all of this crap would be RACIST. So what if most of the engineers and scientists happen to be white. So's 80% of the country. How did they get to be such a big majority? Simple.. They're RACIST!!
For the humor impaired: The parent article dicusses the question of "who we should send".... In other words, "lets discriminate", which is a subtle form of racism in and of itself. It infers that the people who are going to be picked will NOT be picked for their qualifications, but rather, picked for their ethnicity or skin color, which is friggin retarded. I say, send the best people for the job. If they happen to be blacks, cool. If they happen to be hispanic, cool. If they happen to be white, cool. If they happen to be friggin purple, cool. The whole issue of picking an "ethnically diverse" crew is a crock of shit, because "ethnically diverse" may not mean the same thing as "best people for the mission". Neil Armstrong wasn't chosen to be the first guy to walk on the moon because he was white. He was chosen because he busted his ass in training for several years, training that anyone could have undergone, and many did.
Call it like you see it.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
What about Bob, your big white mouse?
Also, the U.S. needs to establish a base before the Communist Chinese, space race style. We don't want Mars to become a Red planet.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Why not just have a doctor named Smith? Along with a robot that looks like it is made of dryer parts and a chimp with a high hat.
Sending prisoners to populate another world probably isn't a good idea. I mean, sure, Australia turned out ok, but have you read Arthur C. Clark's Rama series?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
There's an urban legend or true story about the moon mission. They should bring the same message to mars.
---
About 1966 or so, a NASA team doing work for the Apollo moon mission took the astronauts near Tuba City. There the terrain of the Navajo Reservation looks very much like the lunar surface. Among all the trucks and large vehicles were two large figures that were dressed in full lunar spacesuits.
Nearby a Navajo sheep herder and his son were watching the strange creatures walk about, occasionally being tended by other NASA personnel. The two Navajo people were noticed and approached by the NASA personnel. Since the man did not know English, his son asked him who the strange creatures were. The NASA people told them that they were just men that were getting ready to go to the moon. The man became very excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts.
The NASA personnel thought this was a great idea so they rustled up a tape recorder. After the man gave them his message, they asked his son to translate. His son would not.
Later, they tried a few more people on the reservation to translate and every person they asked would chuckle and then refuse to translate. Finally, with cash in hand someone translated the message,
"Watch out for these guys, they come to take your land."
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?
A mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician.
Hmm, I would too, except... imagine the ping response time? 365,000ms on a good day (season) and 2,700,000ms on a bad day (season).
Definitely won't be telnetting into my Linux shell. :)
Balanced people are a *liability*, not a strength. They make too many safe decisions and aren't willing to take the kinds of risks necessary for a "one-way" trip to Mars to work.
Admittedly you don't want psychotic people, and a military-type discipline would probably be essential to maintain supplies, but at the same time a bunch of conservative, highly rational people aren't going to experiement and try edgy things that might be really successful.
Look at the profile of successful people in business, sports, etc -- how many of them are sane, stable, follow-the-rules kinds of people? They're mostly not unstable, but they're also the kinds of people willing to take huge risks for huge rewards. Guys like you and I take tiny risks for tiny rewards, which is why we couldn't do the one-way to mars.