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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."
Can't you just hook up one of my legs to a life support system and send it there? at least we will have a "part" of a man there. And I can say I have 1 foot in this world and 1 in the next.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/opinion/15DAVI.h tml?ex=1074747600&en=60630c5edf30aefa&ei=5062&part ner=GOOGLE
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
"Mars needs men!"
A few days after landing...
"Mars needs women!"
- 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?
Send Ahnold to Mahhhs!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Send paypal donations to DarlMcBrideMarsTicket@yahoo.com.
Mars may be up against the world as a whole, but by my count, the US has been kicking some Martian tail.
The US leads Mars 10-5.
The USSR is trailing Mars 5-16
Japan trails Mars 0-1
And the ESA is up on Mars 1-0
By god, I think we have the new Democratic campaign slogan...
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!
genesis ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jn-ss)
1. The coming into being of something; the origin.
heaven-sent (hvn-snt)
Occurring at an opportune time; providential.
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.
When your peeve-count reaches the 7 digits, you aren't talking about pets. You're talking about the mother of all peeve zoos.
In all seriousness, I would be willing to volunteer for a one-way trip to the Red Planet. Crazy? Probably. Suicide? Who knows. Incredible opportunity? Darn right. Give me 5 or more years of notice, a hefty paycheck for those years ($1 million-ish, to toss out a figure) and I would be willing to board the ship on a one-way trip there.
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
Send Ahnold to Mahhhs!
Or at least just make him *think* he had went.
Seems to me one of the biggest issues is sending enough water.
Mars has two ice polls and probably underground water. No need to send anything and in fact, you can make a lot of stuff just from the air water and dirt that you find there.
And I've been bothered by politicians who claim launching from the moon is cheaper. While the moon might be a decent staging area, stuff to launch still has to get there from Earth's gravity well before it goes.
me too. I've read that even if there were spaceships fully built and fuled waiting on the moon, it would still be cheaper in every way to just launch straignt to Mars. I think you should read up on Mars Direct
Blaze a trail to the New World
We will need to colonize Mars! Here's what I propose:
General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
Which most likely can't cook or do dishes either... maybe not such a bad idea after all.
If we used nuclear engines, we wouldn't HAVE to leave them there. Not only would be able to build high powered, fuel-efficient rockets, but we'd be able to refuel them from Mar's own materials. Plus we could build a Mars Shuttle for orbital to surface commutes. Didn't anyone read the article on Clean Nuclear Launches a few days ago?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I volunteer.
I fully understand motivation. Take a ship over an ocean and then break the ship up for building material. You'll find a way to survive. Just make sure you brought enough stuff on that ship.
NASA never had any lack of volunteers. What it has lacked since Apollo is the will to get things done. And what needs to be done now, is starting up Human civilization in space.
There are better choices than Mars, but it's not so bad. Humans can even live on the surface while is is being kinetically terraformed. If an actual impactor is required, then settlements should avoid the latitudes where those will be aimed.
The good thing about a one-way trip is you don't waste fuel and structure for a return. You can then stock with solar panels, tools, fuel cells, emergency rations, and oxygen extractors. And people. More people. People to get things done.
Send me. I volunteer. My bones may end up moldering early in some sandy grave, a casualty of circumstance, but no one could say that I didn't try.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
http://www.marsinstitute.info/rd/faculty/dportree/ rtr/ma26.html
-Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
That said, the word "genesis" did not come from the Bible, nor did the word "heaven". "Genesis" is a beginning or creation, "the heavens" describes the sky, and "reading too much into stuff" describes both of us, I think.
By "Hebrew" you of course mean "Greek". And by "beginings" you of course mean "birth".
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Not www.goatse.cx.
Some might say robots can do it for less. They would be partially right. Robots have a ways to go before they can move over and observe unfamiliar terrain as well as a trained human. One of the painful lessons JPL learned when they sent a prototype rover out to look for life was it missed a plant because the plant was just outside the rover's field of view.
One technique we used back in the 1800's was to give away land to whomever would go West. 160 acres to anyone who would build a house and occupy it. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific were driven by greed to build the transcontinental railroad. They not only got government backed financing, they also got land and anything on it. So while the Union is fighting the Civil War, it's also driving the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. The Union could do both because the railroad didn't cost the Union anything. The land had zero value because no one was there and the bonds got paid off by the railroads. California gold and free land were a huge incentive to risk your life crossing the Humboldt sink or Death Valley to look for that perfect piece of land to call home. Seems to me that if a nation made a similar offer of lunar soil and financing, we'd see a lot more activity than we have to date. We won't know what's of value on the Moon and on Mars until people have poked it all over.
OK, your somewhat graphic concept gave me an idea that marries the one way trip with a potential ethical escape clause.
The astronauts freeze themselves "before they die".
It works like this: we send them with no ability to return but with the (mythical) cryogenic equipment to freeze themselves pre "death".
The poles are pretty cold it would take less energy there.
They and their families can at least cling to the hope that one day we'll return with the technology to bring them home and revive them.
The final paragraph of the article is probably the best:
Would NASA entertain a one-way policy for human Mars exploration? Probably not. But other, more adventurous space agencies in Europe or Asia might.
Most of asia has a culture where the individual is seen as part of the whole society, and measured by its contribution to same.
China would certainly have no shortage of volunteers, and no PR problems with such a mission. Neither would Japan.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
Let's assume that the first inhabitants carry with them property rights to a 100KM radius area from their landing spot. Who owns those rights? The explorers? Not likely, they're living soley on the charity of the country that supports them. The country? Sounds a lot like colonialism--a politically risky choice for the US. The private companies that help underwrite the mission (assuming they exist)? Unless Boeing (to take a company at random) paid for the entire launch and support, there's no way the government would let them own part of Mars. The voters would hate that.
I agree that nothing would spur settlement like property rights. Once a US mission landed on Mars, China, Russia and the EU would be falling over themselves to get their own stake. But, I don't know how it would work in the beginning.
The colonial model is the most logical: the US owns whatever part of Mars it's settlers are living on. But, how long does the US own the land? At what point does it revert to the settlers? At what point does the Mars-US relationship become like the American Colonies vs. the British Empire?
It probably shouldn't be based on a strict timeline, but rather a series of developement steps. Once the Mars colony is reasonably self-sufficent (and the US has made a return on it's investment?) the land would become privately held.
Just thinking out loud. There's probably an essay somewhere on the internet that works out these details...
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Anyone who's played Missile Command knows this - we need to send probe missions out in pairs. One is a big, fat, juicy-looking decoy that we send down right around the same time the _real_ mission starts entry of Mars atmosphere. The Martians go for the decoy, and our real mission lands undisturbed.
Either that or we nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Yeah I got first post!!!
Kinda laggy, but everything's looking good up here. I just found a new rock that was like a little bit redder than the other one I found yesterday. Cool.
Please send more corn.
It's possible. It's just very warm. The safest thing to do would be to attempt to land on the sun at night.
To Do: 1. Take over world 2. Pick up Milk and Bread on the way home
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
Also in that magazine, just last September, a convict volunteered for the trip, and suggested that others in his position might also be suitable and willing to make the trip.
At last someone looks at the value of human life objectively. Our lives have an immeasurabley high value, but not so high that it is unthinkable to sacrifice one's life for the good of the group. It's just that our list of acceptable sacrifices is growing shorter.
.
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Sacrifice your life saving your family = acceptable
Sacrifice your life in defense of your country = acceptable
Sacrifice your life in hopes of new discoveries = no
In the wake of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, there was such a loud outcry and long delays because NASA has to do everything it can to make space a safe place for people. Loss of life is simply unacceptable for us "civilized" westernerns.
Space is dangerous, there is risk and will always be risk. We have to keep trying, and keep learning, and the risk will go down. But it will always remain. Wasting billions of dollars to make it an old program a wee bit (percentage wise) safer is ludicrous. We should set LOWER safety standards, and encourage our government to risk lives and we will have progress in SPace exploration.
If we continue to place this high value on human lives we are doomed to low earth orbit for a long long time. We need to make dieing for scientific discovery as acceptible as dieing for terrorism. Heres a thought how much would we have learned if we lost the ~500 people attempting to establish colonies instead of fighting in Iraq?
True there are plenty of people opposed to the war. Though, I imagine a lot more people can accept 500 deaths as the price to eliminate "terrorism" and threats of biological/chemical/nuclear arms against the US and allies, than could the nebuolous cause of better all mankind through discovery.
Think back to the late 1400 and early 1500's. Our society was just leaving the dark ages, that set science and discovery back 500 years perhaps. We were waking up and things got done. At the time going across the ocean was a major risk, and often represented a one-way trip. We owe our modern western society to these early colonists and explorers.
Granted they did some horrible things in the process, but we learned (and continue to learn) from the mistakes of the past. If I had the opportunity to voluteer for a harsh hard life on mars, leaving my friends and family behind, I would do it. I would encourage my children to do it. Everyone is going to die, and I'd rather I have some say in how it happens.
Exploring in the long run is about survival of our species. All animals have the instinct to protect themselves, and to propogate. Adaptation and exploration are critical elements. As we, as a species, have gotten more intelligent we have become increasingly self centered on survival of the individual. Hence we place extremely high values on individual lives. For example, we often do things to our environment that are short sighted and produce positive effects for only a small subset of our population, while causing a negative effect for the larger community.
Anyway, I applaud someone who has the courage to at least propose the idea. Obviously it will not get far, as it would be way too controversial for any government (at least any Western Government) to support. Maybe the Chinese would consider it?
Another point worth mentioning is that while, we may not have the technology at the time we send them to bring them back. It is certainly possible that after a few years things will have progressed enough to send a "rescue" or retrieval mission. So if they can hold out a decade maybe there will be hope. . .
For what its worth thats my take . .
MS2k
Ah yes, the silent majority: a grown-up version of imaginary friends.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
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
I thought the one-way trip was the plan for that N*Sync guy's trip to space....
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.
Yes, they all died. Have you ever met one of them? Of course not, becayse all the settlers died a few centuries ago.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I really wish they would cite prior work here. George Herbert published a piece about this back in 1996, if not before. It's an old idea. It was also one of the proposals for a quick mission to the moon back in 1961. The newsgroup also sci.space.policy beats this to death every few years.
The main issues right now are some specific unkowns when it comes to Mars. The core idea of what they are discussing is possible. NASA's baseline mission to Mars calls for a hab to be sent out in advance of the main mission. That will have working equipment running for a couple years converting the atmospheric carbon dioxide into oxygen and some form of fuel. Then, a few years of manned habitation, then return. It's an incremental increase in cost to make that an indefinately prolonged mission if you allow for repair and resupply.
The author is downplaying one major item though. There is a definate conflict of resources between building a base and science. ISS is a very good example of that. A smaller crew has to be focussed on whatever task is required. I suspect that the initial crews sent would need to be focussed on building out infrastructure, then latter crews directed at the science.
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.