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One-Way Ticket to Mars?
ahogue writes "Paul Davies, who has written several very accessible books on physics and cosmology, proposes an interesting way to get a manned mission to Mars - leave them there. [NYTimes, free reg. req.] While it may sounds shocking at first, the financial and exploratory benefits seem to outweigh the social negatives. Any volunteers?" Reader docanime writes with some sober news: "All this recent talk about Mars rovers and orbiters has made one space fan checking out how well Mars has been deflecting and destroying the space probes. The Mars Scorecard lists all the known fly-by, orbital, and landing attempts/failures made by humans. In case you're curious, Mars is winning 20 to 16."
Pet Peeve #1977832: I hate it when they use overt religious terms in scientific articles. Keep religion relegated to where it belongs and keep science scientific.
Trolling is a art,
- the financial and exploratory benefits seem to outweigh the social negatives
What are the social and exploratory benefits of a manned mission? How do they outweigh the costs?While I'm a big fan of robotic probes to Mars and elsewhere, I have never seen a compelling economic argument for manned exploration of Mars, at least in the short and medium term.
The argument for seems to be based entirely on the assumption that we need to colonize Mars as quickly as possible and this is a first step. But why do we need to colonize Mars as quickly as possible? Until we've exhausted what we can learn from unmanned probes, why send manned missions at all?
Lets look into this "volunteer" thing: we are looking for a person ready to give up their whole life, move to an almost 100% barren place where he/she will soon die utterly alone!
I don't think it would be wise to bet such a multi-ten-billion mission on a whacko like that.
Sigged!
The worst situation isn't sending a human to mars and having them destroyed in the atmosphere. The worst situation is having them enter the atmosphere and then never hearing from them again (ala Beagle2). People could deal with straight-out death. But if we send a person to Mars and their fate is unknown, that would freak people out.
It's just political. It's doubtful that Bush really thinks we should put a man on Mars, or even send a mission there. But doesn't it sound really patriotic? "The First Man On Mars Will Be An AMERICAN!" No sissy robots, which can't even cook or do the dishes. No, a real, honest-to-god, white American male. It's bound to get him some votes.
That's one thing I've been wondering about. If it takes a HUGE construct of boosters, launching equipment, and fuel just to escape earth's atmosphere, how exactly do we expect to return anyone from mars? We can't exactly land a launching pad on Mars in any acceptable timeframe, and it would be incredibly difficult to land a craft that would have the required fuel to escape from Mars.
Somehow I doubt that the desire to have someone walk on Mars is going to be the magical trick that makes fusion a viable energy source. We need more general science, not just a space program.
Ryan Fenton
And I'd be the first one to sign up. This is after all what the ultimate goal of space exploration should be. It's the ultimate goal of life itself after all.
Blaze a trail to the New World
A million dollar salary? No need - I'd do it for free. Mind you, I don't think Mars needs graphic designers any time soon, but if there's a volunteer sheet being passed around, I'll put my name on it. Seriously, while it would basically be suicide, it would be the single coolest thing possible. I'd pay for the right to go...
But what happens when these people get on Mars? Then what? What if, after a few weeks, the video/radio transmissions back to Mission Control are:
"OH GOD PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE! PLEASE I'LL DO ANYTHING! PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO DIE ON THIS PLANET!"
Imagine how horrifying that would be to everyone involved? It would be like watching a person who was condemned to die and fighting it at the last minute. No matter how justified it is, I think don't think there is anything that can prepare you for someone struggling to live and begging for their lives. Imagine the outrage that people on Earth would feel when the media shows a clip of this astronaut pleading for his life? It would go down as one of the darkest days of humanity.
I mean, they can't just shut off the radio and ignore the person.
The humane aspect of sending a person on a one-way death mission is the aspect that the author has completely and utterly ignored. It's easy to forget that right now, but when death is about to happen, everyone will be thinking, "Dear Lord, what have we done? How could we have done this?" and we as a species will regret the entire thing.
I've made exactly the same proposal here on slashdot numerous times. It is the only rational way to approach manned exploration of of Mars. It dramaticly reduces the difficulty and cost of the mission since you dont have to get a return vehicle to Mars, with fuel, or produce the fuel there. A roud trip mission to Mars is misguided thinking stemming from an Apollo mindset and it simply isn't appropriate for the much longer mission to Mars. The Apollo approach also proved to be a dead end. Just think if the Apollo goal had been to put a habitat on the Moon instead of go there, pick up rocks, come back, yawn.
It also eliminates the long periods in zero G which seems to be NASA's misguided obsession (evidenced by the fact the 100 billion dollars wasted on the ISS which is now dedicated to zero G physiology research). Not sure after a long trip in zero G and a long period in 1/3 G on Mars a crew will be real happy coming back to earth's 1 G either. You also reduce the risk of radiation exposure in deep space.
Start lobbing cargo containers, habitats, hydroponics, a nuclear reactor etc at Mars ASAP using unmanned ships. Preceed this with a bunch more robotic missions to search for criticial resource on planet like water.
When cargo ships start arriving reliably and you have enough there to sustain colonists send one or two manned flights with a bunch of astronauts, with enough skills, to start a somewhat self sufficient colony or two. Once there there you dont NEED any more manned missions, just some more cargo flights until they learn to tap Mars resources and be self sufficient. When they are self sufficient the huge expense ends but you still have a bold expedition on Mars, in perpetuity, and we have expended our biosphere which is a priceless thing in the event man, or natural events, destroys earth's.
@de_machina
Unless our society change quite a bit during the next 30 years there's no way we're going to do something like that. But eg.: the chineese could probably do something like that.
I disagree. First of all, the psychological evaluations for anyone that volunteered would be extensive. Second, the trip would only be one-way in the sense that no means of returning is planned at the outset; not that there could never be a possibility of returning (just no guarantee).
First, look at all the crap (in addition to Tang) that was developed as a direct result of the space program and the incredible challenges that have been overcome in the process, including computers, etc. Technology spending returns well on investment. Spending on technology research advances mankind.
That said, what is an example of something that will more directly affect mankind? I presume not bandaid solutions for problems? Because the return on investment there is 0.
Admittedly, I'd at least turn the American public school system into something functional before going back to the moon, which we already did 35 freaking years ago.
But outside of that, I see space exploration as being a problem so difficult that it acts as a spur to develop innovative, useful solutions. It also is a goal with so many inherent problems that it requires a diversity of engineering solutions - unlike a particle accelerator, which while expensive, doesn't require innovative engineering to accomplish, and only advances one kind of basic science. Not to say that's not cool, but I think space exploration ends up being more useful to all of us.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
No liberal will acknoledge Bush, Bush or Reagan's sucesses.
No conservative will give Clinton credit for his enourmous sucesses.
I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but the US has become so polarized that it basically comes down to this:
Conservatives: They decide beforehand that Bush is right. After he does something, they say why it's right. Same with Clinton. He's wrong... once he does something, they say WHY he was wrong.
Liberals: Decide whatever Bush does is wrong because he's a "right-winged whacko" or an "idiot" and whatever Clinton did was awesome.
Examples
1. Conservatives hail the NASA plan as bold and signs of a good leader. Liberals say that it's simply a ploy/trick. Yeah, like it wouldn't be the opposite had Clinton done it.
2. The economic boom was (basically) entirely within Clinton's years. Conservatives remain steadfast that the dems had NOTHING to do with it. Had it been Dole in office from 96-2000 I guarentee you it would have been all his doing according to many.
Sigh... partisan politics...
And thirdly there's no way the public would get to here their last cries for help...
Incidentally...
Please vote against this sort of thing at every opportunity you get.
great you let them in on it next thing you know they will figure out the house and senate have a little something to do with it..
Just to clarify, this is not a homophobic statement. The problem that would be solved is the need for women. I am not implying that we send all homosexual men to Mars.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Nothing on Mars is worth the price at this time. Thrown people on a oneway price cost even more - the soul of our society, to throw away good people for so little. Good gawd, we have even finish the I.S.S. or settled on a successor to the Space Shuttle. And for all of this we are going to throw away the Hubble?
The U.S. space policy is as insane as it's policy in the Middle East or it's tax structure.
I agree. Remember how helpless we all felt when the last taps from the Kursk occurred? With all our technology, we couldn't help those poor sailors trapped like rats, drowning to death? Imagine how public the death of these martianauts would be, and how helpless we would feel? I think there would be outrage especially if an accident occurred and they died, just like how there was outrage when both the Challenger and the Columbia exploded.
Its not so much about getting there, but what new technologies will be developed in the effort to try. New fabrics, new electronics, new radio gear, new sheilding technologies, better batteries, better solar power, etc etc. And then there are jobs, new businesses created, institutions of education focusing more on sciense, more college kids going for science and tech degrees, etc etc.
In the end it doesn't matter at all if we actually end up going, but rather what new things we learn and develop along the way.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
The fact that "the chances for civilization on Mars to be destroyed by an asteroid or a killer plague or any other natural or unnatural disaster are tremendously larger" is completely irrelevant. The chances for civilization to be killed both places is less. Even if there were only a 50% chance over some period of time of the Mars colony surviving, that significantly reduces the chance that all civilization will be destroyed.
Their criteria for scoring is
"For every piece of hardware that returns useful information from the Lobbee's planet, the Lobber scores a point. For every piece of hardware successfully thwarted by the Lobbee, they score a point."
So the score is not Mars 20 Earth 16 but Mars 8 Earth 16.
Based on their own criteria, the following points awarded to Mars are disallowed because Mars did not participate in the failure as the above requires:
event 2: Marsnick 1, launch failure
event 3: Marsnick 2, launch failure
event 4: Sputnick 22, launch failure
event 5: Mars 1, failure in transit
event 6: Sputnick 24, broke up before Mars trajectory
event 7: Mariner 3, failure before Mars trajectory
event 10: unnamed, launch failure
event 12: Mars 1969a, launch failure
event 14: Mars 1969b, launch failure
event 15: Mariner 8, launch failure
event 16: Cosmos 419, ignition failure
event 29: Mars 96, failure to enter Mars trajectory
Launch failures are incompletes and failure to enter Mars trajectory means Mars didn't even know it was coming.
"Stupidity: it's a renewable resource"
Some things are more important than lots of people. Sometimes the sacrifice of individuals is required so that the whole may live. You may think that duty, honor and sacrifice are words but they are much more than that.
The reason that this idea (that sacrifice is sometimes needed) can be abused by the small minded and the power hungry lies in it's truth, not its falsehood.
That being said, I would sign myself up and my wife would sign up for this mission too.
-jbs
Actually one way tickets were how America was founded like 250 years ago. Probably took as long for those ships to get here from England as it is going to take a manned space ship to get to Mars, so ...
Looks like a good plan, at least as good as the plan to colonize America in the early to mid 1600s - 1700s. Then again, didn't the first few groups of settlers die? I might go, but not on the first go-around.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Im sorry, I can't see this as anything but pure, uncut stupidity.
To decide that since we aren't quite ready to send someone to Mars and then bring them back home we will instead just do what we can at the moment and send someone to die on Mars is idiotic in the extreme.
We aren't ready to go to Mars yet. It's as simple as that. We will eventually be ready to make an attempt at it and then it will be the thing to do. Right now it's nothing more than another President saying something to try and get some good reviews in a History book.
Since the end of the space race every President has been trying to be John F Kennedy when it comes to space. Carter got to be the Space Shuttle guy, Reagan had his "Space Station Freedom" thing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
thats exactly the conservative spin I was talking about (which liberals do the same with). Right or wrong, it's still the same... Good economy = From Bush one, NOT clinton. Bad economy = From Clinton, NOT Bush 2.
Good idea, but you would still have a problem with overpopulation while the extra children were growing up. They probably wouldn't know enough to be really useful in a small colony until they were ate least in their mid 20s.
The way I see it, and they way I think it should be seen, is not as sending people out to die so we know what type of rocks are on Mars. We're sending people out who are willing to risk their lives to help the species as a whole. A sustainable, growing colony on Mars would be a priceless invesment for humanity.
boom boom boom
Men wanted for hazardous journey - small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.
Ernest Shackelton placed this ad to recruit applicants for his Antartic voyage. Five thousand individuals responded. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is it, save for the deep of the oceans there is little adventure left here. Everst and K2 have been summited, the globe circumnavigated, Antartica traversed. We must look elseware. We must look to the Moon and Mars. Honour and recognition await those who dare apply...
If we do send a one-way manned mission, we'd be playing for high stakes: If it succeeds, having a bunch of hungry people on Mars is an excellent motivation for the public to continue funding further Mars missions. If, however, these people die in some horrible way, the public will become rather cautious about future missions. This could set us (humanity) back by decades.
I think the fate of a bunch of individuals is not very relevant. More people die in road accidents every day than have ever died in (or getting into) space. But the publicity generated by their fate could well dictate the pace of future space exploration.
"...Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Of course, it's also up to us to make sure it doesn't come to that. I'd want to design the mission so that even when stuff goes wrong, there's always a good fighting chance for the people on the surface. I wouldn't send people there with one oxygen generator or one inflatible crop dome or without some construction gear or anything.
I mean, Mars isn't the moon. There are resources and things to work with all over the place -- the ground, the atmosphere, etc. And compared to space or the moon, it's a really safe place to be.
Send construction gear. Send machine tools. With some basic gear, plenty of power and know-how, you can make all sorts of things on Mars -- shelters, oxygen, water, food, wire, plastics...
Give me 50 skilled people, a dependable nuclear reactor and enough gear to get started and I'll make Mars a safe place for human life inside of a decade. If something breaks, I'll fix it. If we run out of spare parts, we'll mill new ones. If a few of us die, well, we'll mourn them and move on.
Leave the weak and timid back on earth. This isn't a venture for people who aren't willing to take serious risks or who think real "work" is sitting in front of a CRT all day typing TPS reports. Give me people who know construction, farming, materials, mechanics, people who can think on their feet and who can make a round peg fit in a square hole when they need to. Give me people who will work every day to survive and I'll turn the red planet into humanity's second home.
In short, give me pioneers.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
What you're talking about is possible, but the chance of it occuring could be reduced.
As the other poster said, the people chosen to would be chosen based heavily on their mental stability. It might be a good idea to send a psychiatrist along too, just in case. This would depend on the size of the mission of course, but even in a small mission, you could just send a biologist with cross training in psychology.
As implied above, the mission won't just be one lonely guy. A crew of around half a dozen would probably be a good number. You would have the team train together og course, and try to inspire a camraderie between all the team members. The compatibility of all the crew would be a topic of extensive psychological study I'm sure.
I'm not sure if sending couples would be a good idea, or even if sending a co-ed crew ouldn't be asking for trouble. You can imagine what would happen if two of the crew had a messy break up omn Mars. (Or even worse - cheating with another crew member.) Of course, the possible implications of being on Mars for the rest of your life without sex might be a problem for a lot of people.
What else? Well, it wouldn't be a straight forward death mission, I hope. Planning to sustain the crew on Mars would be a lot more useful than an unsupported suicide mission. Knowing that supplies (and more astronauts) are continuously streaming from Earth would certainly help me feel better.
So that's all the reasons I can think of why a non-returning mission wouldn't cause madness and public death.
boom boom boom
Things more important than people?
Sure! Absolutely! There's nothing special about any person, although there may be special people. We're not wonderful and unique snowflakes. We're an animal, just like any other animal.
On one hand, I offer you the magical cure to every disease of humanity.
On the other, the marriage to your wife/husband.
Which is more important? A person? Humanity?
Science wins, because it's a community effort. Science is much more important than any single living person.
With all due respect, I don't think Mars needs property rights. If the purpose of reaching mars is scientific, then I believe Antarctica provides a realistic way of achieving our goals without property rights.
Since 1959 (through a cold war) Antarctica has been the model for the suspension of territorial and property rights. Perhaps the idea of keeping science as the paramount priority there would also enable something like the Antarctic treaty to work on Mars -- even while the population on Mars builds the diverse infrastructure needed to sustain life there...
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
Lets see Flordia's constitution required a full recount and cert by x date, that was impossible so the SCOTUS ordered flordia to obey its constitution. could Gore have won? I dont know I do know he was trying hard to exclude Military ballots...
I believe you're forgeting about the Native Americans who had been living there for centuries. I imagine they would disagree with your assertion that the land had no value.
While I generally agree with your point, I am more inclined to see what we can do with robot technology before we send manned missions. Pushing the limits of robotics also has the nice side effect of being useful for those of us stuck on lovely Terra.
harmonious design
- return vehicle
- return fuel
you could fit a lot of food on a rocket in exchange. We're talking many, many tons. And it woudl be very efficient, high-calorie food. I don't have any exact numbers, but it seems it could be done.boom boom boom
Counterpoint: If we wipe out the Martian biosphere, so what? Especially if we replace it with a rich, vibrant, diverse biosphere?
It's worth thinking about the answer to those questions very, very carefully. If your answer is, "It's just wrong!", then you understand nothing even about your own opinions, and don't expect the rest of us to give a shit about them.
(I'll also suggest that if your answer is "Because life is precious!", that both "Why?" and "Aren't being a hypocrite then, living with a functional immune system?" are two valuable questions to consider.)
I'm not saying that there's no answer to them. I'm saying that knee-jerk environmentalism only applies to Earth, to the extent that it even makes sense there. Applying it to space is stupid. There is nothing we could do the the Lunar "biosphere" that could possibly make it any worse then it already it. Nothing. All we could possibly do is improve it. Mars may be a slightly more complicated case if bacteria or bacteria-analogues are found, but how much does that really change?
In the end, it boils down to: "Is environmentalism taken to the level you seem to be suggesting a death pact, with the only way to satisfy it being to cower on our planet, huddled in a cave for fear of hurting an animal or plant, sometime, somewhere in the universe, waiting for extinction?" If your answer is "yes", don't expect the rest of us to agree with you.
I would like to take a moment to apologize to you for all the retards replying to you. They just don't get it. Some things are more important than any one person. Heck, than ten people.
Science is one of those things. Scientific advancement advances everyone.
I understand. I wouldn't do it, but I understand. I can understand how a man could die with a smile on his face at the end of a mission like that.
We all die sometime. It's going to happen. Advancing the knowledge of mankind sounds like a pretty good way to go.
Life is too short to proofread.
Endless studies represent the length, breadth and depth of the huge volume of our incompetence when it comes to colonizing space. We know more than enough to attempt to survive. We have more than enough knowledge, skill and wealth to start the colonizing process. But we just aren't doing that. As I love to say, no matter how many decimal points academia gets, they always want one more.
... decompression, starvation, freezing, deficiency sickness, physical accident, etc. Yet fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future are not valid reasons for avoiding the future. The prize of Mars is an opportunity that merits great risks.
Mars is a world, like Earth is a world. Worlds are livable. We have rafts of data from various probes, and it tends to boil down to the availability of the elements hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Once we know about those -- and we do -- then any further delay is political. Engineering is just waiting to attack Martian problems. It is waiting on us to get out of Earth's gravity well.
Mars presents the problem of having no readily-available building material. But it's a world. Worlds have ores. All those rocks scattered over Earth's surface contain aluminum, and all it takes to extract it is energy; the same probably applies to Mars. All this means is that Martians must be devoted miners.
We are ready. More precisely, those of us who are ready, are ready. Life is not assured in this venture, like it is when you move from New York to Australia. Nasty death is entirely possible
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Lots of people would be willing to go, even if it meant probably only a year of survival. They could get an amazing about of research done in that time, including great applying human-style reasoning as to what makes sense to examine.
Like what, exactly? I love science -- I ought to, I'm a scientist at a genomics center. But the whole trend of even Earth-bound science is to do as much as possible by machine, and just have the humans look at the *data*. People don't sequence by hand any more -- there are automated sequencing machines. So the whole idea of manned spaceflight just looks anachronistic to me -- something out of the 19th century age of gentlemen explorers. As far as science is concerned, robots in space are far more useful than people. They just make less exciting TV.
Actually one way tickets were how America was founded like 250 years ago. Probably took as long for those ships to get here from England as it is going to take a manned space ship to get to Mars, so ...
The big difference being:
1) North America has a breathable atmosphere.
2) That atmosphere keeps the sun from turning you to mush.
3) There was liquid water.
4) There was food.
5) The journey was privately financed.
6) Home was just 3 months away.
7) Approaching the coast of the US didn't cause a ship to burst into flames.
Don't give me that colonization crap. If we truly had a need for a new landmass, we would colonize Antarctica. It has 1,000 times more available resources and would be a billions of times cheaper.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
To decide that since we aren't quite ready to send someone to Mars and then bring them back home we will instead just do what we can at the moment and send someone to die on Mars is idiotic in the extreme.
I may be wrong about this, but isn't that the same way the majority of the planet we currently inhabit was 'discovered'?
There have been plenty of places man has gone that many probably felt they 'weren't ready for', but we went anyways.. And we'll go again in the future. I for one would sign up in an instant, given the chance.. because what -I- think is 'pure, uncut stupidity' is seeing who can hoard the most money before they croak as we suck the life out of this planet.
But thats just me..
The technical advantage of having humans orbit Mars over purely Earth-based mission control is that, the speed of light being as it is, you get the capability of operating your Mars rovers near realtime. With a VR kit (supplied by say game developers eager for the "Made for Mars" seal of approval), you could get the feeling of humans being actually on the surface of Mars.
Of course, you also miss the benefits of having the crew land on Mars, like gravity and the possibility of living off the land. I suspect the glorified asteroids, Phobos and Deimos, might have enough frozen gas resources to provide the modest thrust needed for artifical gravity. A side mission to one of the satellites could be made just for the purpose of mining ice. The main crewed orbiter itself stays a safe distance away.
Having so many examples of heroism and unselfishness in the history of humanity you think that our most important embassador would not raise to the occasion.
I believe any normal person would made us proud, for a rare ocassion, to be humans.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
C'mon, tell me you haven't been thinking about this already?
;)
We send 14 men and women to Mars, and we watch every waking moment of everyone's lives through cameras in every conceivable location. As tensions rise, Big Brother gets to vote them off the island, and they go to... the... um... other side of the island.
The programme could start on Earth, in Mars simulations and "team building" exercises. We should start now to develop the techniques that will be needed to help 14 people cope with each others' company for 2 years at a time. Starting with day-long "Mars on Earth" expeditions (camping in the desert, in the arctic, in underwater habitats, etc) and work up to the final pre-mission selection camp - 6 months in Anchorage, Alaska.
Imagine the advances we'd be able to make in psychology when we have access to situations where we could experiment with stress handling and counselling techniques? Wouldn't that pay for itself?
As a lead-up to the Mars expedition, move all those robot-vs-robot competitions to the desert, then the Moon. The only entry criteria for the Moon and Mars robot-vs-robot competitions would be that you get there. The robot that retrieves the most useful scientific data wins - the competition being the Lunar/Martian environment (and other robots).
Wouldn't you love to be one of the first owners of domestic robots who have "Moon Muscle 1" as their ancestors? Not only does it vacuum the carpet and prune the roses, but it can kick the Roomba's arse...
Perhaps there could also be "lifestyle" shows, where people come up with new and amazing ways to decorate a 2m x 2m x 2m bunk module, cook in an all-electric kitchen module, grow exciting (and mind-altering) herbs in the garden module, and do make-overs of each others' recreation modules. We'd also have the "adult" segment - voyerism to the extreme as we explore sex in low-G, and find new and exciting ways of pleasuring the person we've been bonking non-stop for 18 months... and then we can redefine that stupid "wife swap" show. The mind boggles and the hedonistic opportunities presented.
And don't forget the opportunity for current affairs programs such as, "A Mars Affair", "The Late Show: Starring Martian Letterman".
But we should be careful to send people other than scientists to Mars. Sure, absolutely include geologists, microbiologists (for the "practical science" on Mars), chemists and physicists (for the "research science"), but they'll need horticulturists, photographers, cameramen, a poet and a singer/songwriter. Don't let Spirit and Opportunity get all the credit for being the "Ansel Adams of Mars" - get some human photographers up there who can do lanscape shots for the sake of art, rather than navigation.
I can't wait till I can have such contrasting pictures as Little Fisher Falls (a Tasmanian waterfall) sitting right next to a Gusev Crater panorama. Wow.
So there we go - an entire pantheon of entertainment prospects that would allow the space program to be entirely funded from pay-per-view media.
The next step will be to find some resources that the Moon and Mars can provide that are unique - the cheesy souvenir rock pets for starters. I wonder if herbs grown on Mars would have unique flavour properties compared to those grown here on Earth? Imagine parsley that's twice as expensive as Terran saffron
So there you go - start off with all the robot-geek shows where we slice, dice and experiement our way to the top of the survival heap. Boost rocketry and extra-Terrestrial manufacturing to the scale required for consumer launches (manufacturing robots in space would be cheaper than building them on Earth and launching them to the Moon or Mars).
Once we get space elevators or sling-rides up and running, we can start with the human voyagers.
What do you reckon? Any grain of sense in my babbling?
One thing I think you fail to see, is that on the list of places to be colonized Mars is high on the list (since there are not many places on earth that are yet uninhabited (the bottom of the ocean maybe, but that is also not without risk)). One required part of a colonization effort is the actual colonists, which in this case would be the astrounauts. They would then explore, build, and learn how to live on Mars (or die trying), and as the project progress they might be joined by additional voluntiers hitching a ride on the biannual supply rocket.
While I'm not personally enough of an explorer type to want to go on those conditions, I think that the concept is fine. And given the things people sacrifice their lives for, I think it would be a fine cause. And I think that the decision about which odds the astrounauts are willing to risk should be left to them, let society discuss whether the mission gives benefits proportional to the resources spent (count the ACTUAL cost of the astrounauts lives if you will, but unless you want to stop any progress of the human race, you need to accept that every step forward caries a cost lives (sometimes a potential risk, other times people WILL die to make a better world for all of us)). Plus - you are forgetting that if the astrounauts survive long enough they might get a ride home on the spaceships that are developed using the knowledges gained from getting the astrounauts out there in the first place. Or maybe they will call home and ask for some chemical processing equipment to be put into the next resupply rocket, and start the first gas-station outside the earths gravitywell. Then it is not a true one-way trip, it is just a dangourous voyage with a high risk of not coming home, something that explorers and soldiers have dealt with since the dawn of time.
In short: Let the people who are putting their lives on the line decide what odds they will take, and what potential gain they think is worth their lives.
The poster is a person, just like you are and I am. "Going to Mars" is not a "thing", it's a human activity which that human being wants to do. If you believe in "people first", how about giving some weight to everybody's life, including the lives of people who *need* to explore the universe around them?
I'm probably going to die, and so are you. In fact, no human being has ever reached 2^16 days of life.
Face it: your life is a finite resource. There are things you can do to conserve and extend that resource. But at the end of each day, you've traded that day for whatever love or money or experience or creative work or good deads or hedonism that you chose.
Plenty of people make commitments longer than a day. If you go to school, you trade years of your life in exchange for knowledge and socialization. If you play music, you spend a lot of time practicing. If you want to be a doctor or a politician or a writer or just about anything worthwhile, that's years of experience that you'll need to accumulate.
So now we're talking about a life commitment. It's just a bigger scale. Whether it's worthwhile or not is an empirical decision which properly belongs to the individual who decides how to commit their life.
And I'd like to add that I haven't a single fucking doubt that not one person talking on this message board about giving their life for a years worth of research (on a planet that's going to be there for a very long time) is qualified in any way to actually do it. I seriously doubt that any of them could contribute in any way to such a mission.
Find the people who have the skills, brains, and talent to actually do this and you're going to find a bunch of people who are smart enough not to want to go until there's some real benefit and the plan is sound.
The people talking in here are just sounding off with no real expectation of it happening. It's heroism with a condom on. No real danger, no real possibility of danger.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I'm pretty sure you'd feel like a complete moron when after the first 3 hours you're thinking "shit, I could've got the same effect in Arizona".
Seriously, what exactly is worth dying for on Mars?