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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."
- 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!
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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.
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
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
I don't think the knee-jerk Bush-bashing is appropriate, either (mostly because it's offtopic) but it deserves pointing out that if he really wants it to happen, he should fund it properly. The announcements the other day showed only that he was willing to sacrifice other projects (that's where the money comes from) for a political stage show (because Mars it where the action is right now) and to top it off, he's giving more money ($1.5B vs $1.0B) to "encourage marriage" so you see where his priorities really are.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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