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Will Mars be a One-way Trip?

Posted by samzenpus on from the please-send-paris-hilton dept.

alexj33 writes "Will humans ever really go to Mars? Let's face it, the obstacles are quite daunting. Not only are there numerous, difficult, technical issues to overcome, but the political will and perseverance of any one nation to undertake such an arduous task is huge. However, one former NASA engineer believes a human mission to Mars is quite possible, and such an event would unify the world as never before. But Jim McLane's proposal includes a couple of major caveats: the trip to Mars should be one-way, and have a crew of only one person."

11 of 724 comments (clear)

  1. I mean... by Corpuscavernosa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... shouldn't you at least PLAN on a round-trip ticket, assuming all the obstacles can be overcome, even if it's a long shot?

    --
    We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
    1. Re:I mean... by schon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This whole article is stupid, and makes some of the most ridiculous comparisons imaginable.

      C'mon - comparing flying a single person to Mars with no chance of coming back is like Lindburgh flying to Paris??? Is he saying that Mars is populated with (to quote the Simpsons) cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Or maybe he's suggesting that upon arriving at Mars, the astronaut will have an unlimited supply of hot women and baguettes?

      And the whole 'constant communication' - umm.. last time I checked, Mars was between 3 and 21 light-minutes from Earth.. that means you say something, and get a response in a half-hour later.. yeah, that's really constant. It would be more like a video postcard than a conversation.

      This article is *really* poorly thought out.

    2. Re:I mean... by BlueStraggler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Round-trip tickets are only useful for tourists, and the real reason to go to Mars is to colonize it, not to take some snapshots and then go home again. We are doing that already with robots, so there's really no point in doing it with people.

      The interesting idea here is not the one-way thing, but the one-man, one-way thing. The author is right, it's initially kind of a shocking proposal, but when you stop to think about it, we're just a bunch of wusses. Our ancestors did this kind of risky one-way shit as a matter of course. (Think of how the Polynesians colonized the entire Pacific in simple canoes.) There shouldn't be anything shocking about it at all. We're just not worthy. Some other culture will do this, and we'll talk about how barbaric they are for trading so callously in the lives of their astronauts. But I guarantee the astronauts will go willingly, and while we tut-tut their backward ways and high mortality rate, they'll be conquering Mars.

    3. Re:I mean... by Tiger4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      McLane talks about psychology differences of current astronauts vs the US astronauts of the 1960s and the Russian cosmonauts.

      Spending time talking about how the old guys had the right stuff and spirit will carry them through and make the difference is just ya-ya silliness in place of real thought. That is the same kind of thinking that convinced the French that light artillery was just the ticket to face the German threat. The French assumed (naturally) that their soldiers could and would overcome any burden with their miraculous Esprit. Worked really well for them.

      Real "problems" have real solutions based in the real world. I disagree completely about the Right Stuff fluff, but in any case, today's astronauts are the ones you have. Deal.

      --
      Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
    4. Re:I mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We're just not worthy. Some other culture will do this, and we'll talk about how barbaric they are for trading so callously in the lives of their astronauts.

      Lucky we don't do anything barbaric or callous with the lives of our young people, like sending them to Iraq or something. So we might kill one cosmonaut or astronaut. Big deal. We kill hundreds of soldiers and civilians in Iraq, it doesn't even make the news headlines any more.

    5. Re:I mean... by 2short · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are plenty of volunteers for suicide missions with much less lofty goals, as a quick review of the news will depressingly demonstrate.

      I'm sure you'd have a ton of volunteers for this, many of them perfectly sane and competent. Everybody dies; but not everybody dies on fricking Mars.

      But it will never happen. Manned space exploration is foolish. Robots do a radically better job for a tiny fraction of the price. The only reason we go with humans is the emotional feel-good PR. You need to sell the story to the public, and that doesn't work so well if you're going to kill the guy, no matter how OK he is with that.

    6. Re:I mean... by Urban+Garlic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > b) it alleviates population issues

      I believe the population argument is bogus. Increasing wealth and standard of living is strongly correlated with decreasing fertility rates in every culture and nation on earth. Most population projections which include this effect show the earth's population peaking within 100 years, and then declining, and it's unlikely that a significant colonization effort will be underway within 100 years. (Sorry, can't find the population references.)

      So, there's Scenario A, in which we all get richer, and the population problem stabilizes, so we can't use it as an argument to go to Mars. There's Scenario B, in which we don't get richer, and consequently can't afford to go to Mars. And of course there's Scenario C, in which a small group becomes very rich while the teeming masses remain poor and continue to reproduce -- in this scenario, the small number of rich people who can go to Mars don't substantially alleviate the population problem, because there aren't very many of them.

      There's also a Scenario D, in which a small group of rich people innovate to make trips to Mars affordable for the teeming masses, but I think this is really Scenario A again -- if Mars-going technology is mass-affordable, then many other good things are also mass-affordable, which means that the masses have a high standard of living, which means they already have low fertility, and the population pressure, again, is low. A real Scenario D requires that Mars-going technology be somehow made much more affordable than terrestrial travel, energy, education and birth control, which I would rate as theoretically possible but unlikely.

      Personally, I find manned space travel inspiring, but I think it's important to be clear-headed about exactly which problems it does and does not solve.

      --
      2*3*3*3*3*11*251
  2. Re:Redundancy? by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reality of large Mars missions is that the human is only along for the ride, sort of like a color commentator, to help snare the public's imagination and more funding.

    Bullshit. If the mars mission is actually doing useful work, then having people physically there will make the work much more efficient. Humans on mars can make decisions in real time. The latency of radio signals makes trying to do anything significant remotely really obnoxious.

    --
    -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  3. Why not? by Bragador · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In the end everything is useless anyway but a mission to mars is fun for the whole species.

    See, instead of everyone looking at their navel, people will start raising their head and will start looking at the stars. Instead of having most people working for their own goals, people will start to share a dream. Instead of fighting each other, people will start to work as a team.

    I'm currently working in the field of psychology and even though I'm not high on the ladder, the calls I receive are about couples breaking up and people complaining of surviving instead of living. A lot of people are living without knowing what to do with their life and this is the kind of goal that might bring people together and give them something to do with their life even if in the grand scheme of things it is useless.

    Also, about the benefits, you can't go wrong with studying how to negate the effects of loneliness which apparently affects tons of people that live in cities. Also you get to fight back bone problems that are not that different from the problems aging people have. Of course, you also get the technologies for space travel but you don't care for that that much.

    So is it worth it ? I say sure, why not?

  4. Re:I'd go. by mcmonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It'd be just like the Mayflower... Only without the natives and smallpox...

    Yeah, only problem is, without help from the natives, everyone on the Mayflower would have died within a few years.

    I'll make my own interplanetary mission...with hookers, and blackjack.

  5. Re: Two? No, one. by BigBlueOx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do what any good geek would do: Make an AI.

    How does geek would do: make an AI make you feel?