Slashdot Mirror
Mars Journal Issue Inspires Hundreds of One-Way Trip Volunteers
Velcroman1 writes "An interplanetary trip to Mars could take as little as 10 months, but returning would be virtually impossible — making the voyage a form of self-imposed exile from Earth unlike anything else in human history. What would inspire someone to volunteer? A special edition of the Journal of Cosmology detailed exactly how a privately-funded, one-way mission to Mars could depart as soon as 20 years from now — and it prompted more than 400 readers to volunteer as colonists. 'I've had a deep desire to explore the universe ever since I was a child and understood what a rocket was,' said Peter Greaves, the father of three, and a jack-of-all-trades who started his own motorcycle dispatch company and fixes computers and engines on the side. 'I envision life on Mars to be stunning, frightening, lonely, quite cramped and busy,' he said. Given the difficulties of the mission, Lana Tao, the editor of the Journal, said she was surprised by the response. 'At first we thought the e-mails were a joke... then we realized they were completely serious.'"
Of course, they'd have to compete with the thousands of you who said you'd go.
... my boss?
offer it to people in prison / as alt to prsion there are some smart people in there who pulled off some big capers and have skills that are needed on mars.
People don't stop to think. It would be psychological suicide. People say yeah no problem, but in reality 99.9999% of people would not be able to do this.
Isn't this how the movie Aliens started?
I am never going to that colony. I have seen too many sci-fi movies to want to mess around with that. Deep Space exploration on the other hand, I would volunteer for
The world is how you make it
Sorry, but I think a one-way trip to Mars is too good of a thing for some people in prison. I wouldn't exactly want convicted murderers in the 1st colony on Mars, would you?
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Religion: just what we need to send to other planets.
It's easy to volunteer for something that doesn't sound like it's going to hurt. When the radio messages come back with "Please... I'm running out of oxygen... it's cold and the pain is excruciating," the mission will be viewed as a fiasco for the rest of time.
Facing death with dignity is a lot easier to imagine than it is in real life. Some do manage it anyway, of course, but which of those hundreds of volunteers is really going to pull it off? It's the kind of thing you don't find out about for certain until you get your one-and-only shot.
Even if they do pull it off, the people behind the mission are going to be accused of murder. It will be an ugly stain on them for the rest of their lives. The mission is temporary, but the subsequent death is forever.
So we can treat this as a charming mental exercise, and even be surprised by how many people would volunteer for the mission. But it's simply not ever going to happen.
Why not just hold off until we can actually bring them back as well? What's the rush? If we can get there, then we're halfway to the ultimate goal, right?
Of course, if this really is going to be funded voluntarily (meaning privately), then I have nothing to complain about.
Is how a father of three could volunteer to depart on what would most likely be a suicide mission. Exploration and the battle against entropy and all that is all good and well, but if one is a father, one has certain responsibilities that are paramount about anything else.
I will probably get flamed to death about this, but I guess in this case, the guy must be either be completely discontent with his lot in life, or he must be the most selfish, self serving person that exists.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
There's probably at least some disconnect between those willing to go to Mars to start a colony, and those who are qualified to go to start a colony (certain skillsets, psychology, etc.) Personally, I would probably go, but I know I don't have anything to offer a colony to help it start and last.
Send up a flotilla of cargo ships with parts for the return vehicle.
Then send up a flotilla of vehicle builders.
Then send up your volunteer.
Yea - the last thing we need is another Australia...
Look at Australia.
I think it'll be OK. Just look at what happened with Australia. Just give it fifty years or so.
OK, jokes aside, I don't think convicted murders have the mental capacity to stay focused to survive on Mars.
Which is why we only send people in resort prisons, not federal pound-me-in-the-ass prisons.
Yes. Sign me up to go. Any time. I'll lift heavy boxes. I also have read "Time Enough for Love" 3 times.
offer it to people in prison / as alt to prsion there are some smart people in there who pulled off some big capers and have skills that are needed on mars.
Isn't this how we ended up with Australia?
What happens when aliens find our mars colony, and think that the entire race is composed of people like that?
Send all the volunteers. Send several ships with greenhouse and housing building materials. Eventually we will build the technology to rescue them. For now, they can just Tweet us from Mars.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Why not? What does murder have to do with being on Mars? There's nobody else there to murder. Better to send the murderer away than somebody who is a net positive to society. 'Course, better still to be able to write a return ticket.
I think what you'd have to watch out for would be suicidal people, including people who are suicidally unwilling to do the work to maintain a livable habitat.
. . . the person they should pick for such a mission should be a Major in the Air Force who is married, and answers to the name "Tom." :)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"Sorry, but I think a one way trip to Mars is too good of a thing some people in prison." It's only too good a thing for those who enjoy living with crippling loneliness in a cold world without water.
But even my longest (currently) planned trip (a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail) still has me going into town for resupply every week at most and of course ends with me safe back home. On shorter trips I've spent a longer time away from people and civilization (60 days in the woods, but I had made several trips ahead of time to lay in supplies so I didn't need to go anywhere) and it was lonely - but again, in the end I knew I was coming back to the things I felt were "home." Despite going on those kinds of trips (which I venture to say most westerners never even come close to doing), I really can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to make such a trip and *know* that I was never, ever coming back and I would almost certainly never, EVER see any of the people and places I love, and never have the luxury of easy survival that we have here on Earth, even in some of the worst places on the planet, ever again.
I know there are many people who would volunteer for such a trip - I certainly think it would be pessimistic to think that we couldn't find several thousand people who are qualified and capable of making the trip. Heck, maybe I'd even be one of them, but based on my experience simply removing myself from human company for 2 months, probably not. In any case, people like that "father of three" volunteering just come off as romantic and not particularly thoughtful.
We don't have anything comparable to abandoning *for sure* everything you know and settling somewhere new in our race's living memory. We have a handful of people alive who were born in the very late 1890's - when crossing from Europe to the Americas was not unreasonable to contemplate doing twice, or being able to send for one's family, or otherwise not cut oneself off from everything you knew. Even Columbus made it here and back - there really would be nothing comparable in even the most charitable definition of modern times.
Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but I do wonder what people who could do this one-way-for-sure trip and survive would be like. I have lived without the streets of my city underfoot and the ceilings of my home overhead, but I can't imagine what it would do to me to have alien soil under alien skies and know I'd never set foot on Earth again.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein for a good story with this basic premise.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
They stay away from Earth, nervous that all humans like to plumb the depths of their physiology?
Oh wait, haven't the aliens been doing that to us for years?
but what did I see? I saw the sea."
What is the average height of a astronaut or even an air force pilot? Anyone know?
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You need to understand that the latency in Internet connectivity would make playing real-time online games almost impossible. Even simple IM messages could take 20 minutes or so to get across. YouTube would probably be virtually inaccessible, as would any site that depends on streaming. I'm just sayin'.
Of course, you could play other volunteers with you, as long as some enterprising game company (no pun intended) allowed you to run a server there.
It's easy to write up an e-mail and send it, especially knowing this is unlikely to ever happen. I'd say less than 2% of those volunteers are actually people who would go through with it if asked.
Slashdot?
(insert dramatic music here)
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Ok. We send people. Cool! Awesome! All for it! I'd volunteer in a heartbeat.
However, I take the presumption that what will be sent along will be minimal. Right or wrong, on-site utilization of resources is going to be the only way to exist there. Meaning: extracting every bit of energy in every possible way for the the necessities to survive as long as possible. Since we're in these 'troubled economic times', yet such an expedition is proposed (if only on paper), I'm wondering what the current state of engineering ( biological, chemical, physical) is for such a proposal. With the premise that we must utilize local minerals, environmental and atmospheric fluctuations, and any and all radiations to the maximum, where technologically, do we stand? Again, this is with the presumption that we send minimal gear for survival with said planetary explorers. But, we send all the tools necessary for resource allocation and extending their survival along with them. Call it a test of willful planetary survival.
We've been wandering off on one-way trips for most of human existence, even if most didn't completely realize the nature of the trips. Huge numbers of immigrants to the Americas *knew* it was one-way, the journey was treacherous, and none of it would be easy, and huge numbers of them didn't survive. The human animal is, by nature, an exploratory creature, of course many of us would go. Many more of us would go afterward, over the bones of those before us, armed with what little knowledge their passing gave us, because the hope of success would so mightily outshine any sense of hope left here.
Offer it to those in Prison and then send those who don't want to go. :P
But being realistic, I would never recommend such a thing. They'll grow a planet-full of Axe-Murders and Earth haters. I don't think you want all that blood on your hands. :)
Geekism is your _only_ God!
...didn't expect to return, either.
Read the Rendezvous With Rama series books from Arthur C. Clarke. In one of the later books, people of the Earth are asked to volunteer for a large one-way mission. Not enough people volunteer so they tap prisons to make up the difference. It doesn't end well.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
In giving his life to explore new frontiers, he sets an example for his children, and for children everywhere, that people can think beyond just their own family and do something for the greater good of humanity.
Seems to me you are pretty self-serving, thinking only about your own family and not the future of mankind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If Doctor Who has taught me anything, don't drink the Martian water. Not with out an appropriate water filter of course.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Next thing you know Adult Only games'll be banned on Mars too.
If the plan is for a one way trip and not a "suicide expedition" than you don't look at it as "never coming home" you look at it as "making a new home there". It's not apriciably different from how the American colonies were founded. Or how the western US was "settled".
Most people who left Europ for the Americas didn't have the means to return, they were planning to leave and start a new life somewhere else. Some left planning to be joined by family later, other brought everything the could along and hoped for the best. Some presumably expected to be able to return "someday", but I don't think they were a large percentage.
The only differecne with a Mars colony is that the Mars colony is less likley to be self sufficient in the near future, and therefore the Earth based founders will have to face the descision of at what point do the stop resupplying the colony. Do they keep the supplies going indefinately, or set a cutoff date? This not a lack of volinteers would prevent any sane coorporation from planning a private mars colony.
He's a father of three.
He's exceeded the replacement rate, obviously he's an irresponsible bastard driving the overpopulation engine.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You don't have children for their sake, you have them for your own.
Then the Duggars must be the most selfish people on the planet.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Sending humans to Mars is just a waste of time and money. For the same resources you can send a bunch of unmanned missions and accomplish more.
I wouldn't exactly want convicted murderers in the 1st colony on Mars, would you?
I would if I had the PayPerView rights and lots of cameras stationed around the planet.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I doubt that anyone who wants to leave earth and never come back would pass a psychological profile test.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Mars Needs Women!
. .
I am already there.
...is build several, maybe up to one hundred closed structures (to protect the inhabitants from the harsh outdoor climate) and have small communities of around one hundred people in each one, with one individual (some sort of overseer) the whole area. They could test different social situations for each of the groups in large experiments, which go on for several years before the door to the community is opened. Kind of like a 'vault' for people...
> or sending volunteers on a one way trip to Mars: these are not actions that can be tolerated by a moral society.
Thank-you for dictating your morality [on] to me. NOT.
I have the right to live (or die) on my own as I see fit. e.g. If I wish to kill my lungs (smoking), my liver (drinking), that alone is my choice. I don't of course. I wish others didn't either, but that is THEIR right (and choice.) The fact that you are blind to the other side of the equation demonstrates you have this have the false belief that morality of soceity is "absolute" -- it is not, it is relative. Any _truely_ free society does not have right to impose only one set of group consensus of morals onto others -- who determines what is "right" ?
Now piss off. :-)
Most people may not appreciate how difficult isolation can be. I would advise volunteers to read The Human Experiment by Jane Poynter. She relates her experience inside Biosphere 2, and the problems that arose among the crew.
read, think, then respond
i wrote:
"the only way someone is going to Mars one way by themselves, is if they fund and build the rocket themselves, and not tell anyone else beforehand"
do you understand that? do you really?
by the same token, go ahead and smoke and drink and eat donuts all day. i don't care. because what i wrote never was about me forcing my morality on you
the issue is what A SOCIETY does, not what AN INDIVIDUAL does. do you understand that? do you really?
a trip to mars will be paid for by the GOVERNMENT OF THAT SOCIETY, which will reflect the values of THAT SOCIETY
how the fuck you interpolated that to mean i was coming into your house and take away your smokes and forcing my morality on you is utterly beyond my understanding. you are certainly a hyperspastic and extremely defensive brand of idiot, that's for sure
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you can send up a colony, why cant you send a return ship? The one way impossible trip is a thought experiment that quickly justifies how a two way trip is possible. ...or a one way trip with an escape option.
In the 1960's we made it to the moon in 8 years, when NO ONE has ever been out of earth's orbit before the program started. And we got the men back safely to earth. And we did it several times.
Now, 40 years later, we think it will take 20 years to do a ONE WAY trip to the moon?
Our sense of ambition disappoints me. We should go to Mars and we should bring those people back. They will be heroes and we should not let them die. I understand that some people think its a waste of money, and other people would rather we go one way then don't go at all, but I'd rather we just go, and quit worrying about the cost (well, I mean we shouldn't waste money, obviously - we should do it as economically as is reasonable).
If we took just 5-10% of *one years worth* of our hyperinflated military budget (which would give us $70 billion for the Mars trip. That should be enough.), we could go to Mars and back, in 10 years. So, 1% total from the military budget over 10 years. You think Mars is a waste of money? Our military is a waste of money. Lets take 1% of it and do some inspirational work.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
I once had a dream I was Captin Crunch of the USS Soggyprize with soo many incredible adventures exploring the galaxy.
I would be surprised if any of these people knew jack shitt about geology or have actually contributed anything meaningful to the understanding of their own planet?
If you are really serious about exploring mars you would go for the most cost effective option available within the limits of current technology if obtaining knowledge was your primary goal.
MRO has contributed more to the understanding of Mars than any rover ever has. What is the difference between someone being there operating a machine to gather data vs doing the same from earth? Several minutes RTT lag? If your smart about it you can develop some minimal machine intelligence to minimize the impact and move on with the real science.
I am not against manned missions to mars.. Addressing hard problems always seems to find a way to filter back to help improve life and society on earth. What I am against is being a cheap bastard about it and cutting corners rather than confronting the challenges head on. Go big or go home.
Really? Nowadays, a German cannibal can find a willing dinner, using a right form of marketing, and she is surprised at a good number of fairly human and decent responses?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
In the 1600's people from Europe went to colonize the new world. They brought with them tools and provisions to start a new life. Few of them went back home, in fact some of the ships that landed on American shores were taken apart for their wood to build shelter. There is a big difference between the colonization of America and the possible colonization of Mars. (Mars can't support life without a lot of technology that must be brought along, the new world was still Earth!) But the idea of leaving home and never going back with only limited communication possible with those left behind is the same. (It will actually be EASIER for the Mars colonists to communicate with their loved ones left behind than it was for the American colonists!) Eventually as the new world colonies grew, so did trade and it became possible for the colonists to travel back to Europe, and the same will happen for future Mars colonists.
Europe didn't start to colonize the America's until there were large fleets of ships plying the waters of the Atlantic. Until we have the same kind of access to space that 17th Century Europe had to the Atlantic I don't see us being able to colonize Mars. I also think we should establish a colony on the moon first, if for no other reason than to test the required technology.
..I mean the Latency can't be much worse than what I get here n South Africa. No...no, it probably can...darn it. Fine, just send me a new PC and some good games every now and then.
It's probably easier to train willing exiles, er colonists than it is to find trained and ready people willing to take the one way trip.
Sounds like a lot of guys got dumped over the holidays. And now have nothing better to do than read the Journal of Cosmology.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Many men have given their lives for much less. To anyone that wishes to go, all I can say is Godspeed!
I definitely wouldn't call their focus to survive into question... It's their tolerance of the survival of all the other colonists that has me worried!
to planet Earth?
Which do you suppose is more damaging to your mental health: never experiencing intimacy with the opposite sex because
a. you are stranded forever on an alien planet, or
b. you are too socially awkward/unattractive/unpleasant/smelly/geeky?
I bet lots of people are plenty isolated already and going to mars could only be an improvement!
You need to understand that the latency in Internet connectivity would make playing real-time online games almost impossible.
I am pretty sure that living on a new mars colony in the first 40 years or so of its inception will pretty much preclude playing video games. While there would be down time, I suspect that leisure activities would be focused on more pragmatic things, like reading, writing, coding, sewing, cooking, etc. If you could waste a few hours on a video game or do something that would add to your chance of survival for the next few months, most will choose the latter.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Along with the volunteers send supplies. Treat it like a prison colony and in a few decades presto Space-Australia.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Personally, I'd never cut myself off from fresh air for the rest of my life, no matter how fun the adventure might be. I expect things to go something like this after a while (scene from Das Boot, skip to 0:41)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P8NjdIy0_M
. . . they will finally have a place to send the last prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison.
I agree, that was a terrible movie!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Well, when the vid feeds start coming back of people crying and having anxiety attacks on mars from the isolation and lack of hope and motivation... it would become a pretty ugly adventure.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2117#comic
I'd expect most people would be disqualified because of their age. You wouldn't send gramps only to have him die really soon; that's selfish of you gramps! Send young people fresh out of unis or with some of the required experience, they'll probably be the most bang for buck. If they are older, they'd better have a lot of experience in something really useful (doctors for example). And judging from the timeframe, the younger candidates can't really have a say right now as they're busy being in school.
We should be designing and deploying intermediate Supply Stations between Earth and Mars. These could store supplies and be jump off points for the next "leg" of the journey. Instead of one trip taking 10 months. we can take 100 trips 1/2 or 1/3 of the way in 4 to 6 months and then shuttle between them. Ultimately we would have a constant shipping between points of materials.
..it wouldn't be as dramatic as you make it sound. Consider living in your flat alone without going out for months. And then compare with camping in some really remote place with some friends. It's unbelievably exaggerated, but it's isolation from people and lack of communication that hurts and alienates most, not isolated places.. They should really do some personality compatibility tests to the potential volunteers - it is humans that will go and coexist, not emotionless tools.
Sending those in their 60's is a great idea. Here is why. (1) They're going to die anyway. (2) No medicare/social security/etc. costs (3) In a low gravity environment they should last longer (and if not, see #1) (4) They can slowly build out the infrastructure of the colony. (5) We know they are "done" when they can build a ship that can return to Earth orbit which can transport at least, oh say, four passengers back to Earth. Alive.
At that point, the colony will be self sustaining. Only then do we send fertile people that can produce and raise children.
Actually, a family like that can completely game-lock a small town 20 years later. Family gets to stick together and do things that for anyone else would be colluding.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What, exactly, is being "explored" here?
Mars.
I have seen photos and even video from various countries across Europe; it was nothing like actually being there. And yet of Mars we know far less than that.
We know only the tiniest slice of Mars, from rovers that can move around a thousand times slower than any human explorer. Saying we "know" mars is like saying you know a place because you looked at the satellite view on google Maps and glanced at a few streetview images.
Long-term human survival is predicated on moving off-planet, just like you'd want offsite backups for data. Stop belittling what is literally the most important and achievable thing we can be doing as a species.
Just because YOU cannot understand how it can be done, does not mean it's science fiction.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
offer it to people in prison
I don't understand why you would reward prisoners when it has been shown there are a LOT of volunteers who want to go and have done nothing wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whether leaving everything behind to move to Mars is morally good or bad is sort of beside the point. It's about the mission: GP's point is that people actually willing to do this likely are motivated by personality traits that would unfit them for success - perhaps these folks are antisocial, and the mission would require living in close proximity to others? I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it at least seems plausible. And this is a dynamic that wasn't in play in the Curies.
This is dumb, dumb, dumb.
There is only one reason this is described as a "one-way" mission; Mankind's incredibly stupid reliance on chemical rockets. Chemical rockets *will not* allow us to explore any of outer space in a meaningful way, with the possible (and expensive) exception of near earth orbit.
We already have the technology to jet where-ever we want around the solar system. Project Orion.
There was a BBC show on it.
The short story: It was a design to use small nuclear explosives to push up against an abalative impact plate with shock absorbs. One pulse every 120 seconds. Significant levels of acceleration, and a mass to energy ratio that would make any rocket scientist blush. We could *easily* send a million ton spacecraft to Mars, with more than sufficient fuel to return several massive (10s of thousands of tons) spacecraft back to earth.
We could do round trips every 6 months without blinking an eye, with the added side effect of using much of the world's weapons grade nuclear fuel. Enhancements to the design switched from Fission to Fusion; at which point Orion spacecraft would be able to start to move around interstellar space. Early designs using current materials could achieve 0.05-0.1c . Designs using future materials (or possible relying upon non-solid ablative surfaces (this includes a plate that is sprayed with an oil solution before each blast)) could theoretically achieve .8c . This would make round-trips to Alpha Centauri possible.
How do you get around the nuclear radiation issues? Simple. First, there's no serious issue with radiation in space; build it in orbit, and there's not much to worry about. Second, the fallout/radiation from direct planetary launches would be dwarfed by weapons tests that occurred in the past, and probably by fossil fuel plant emissions, as well. The total fallout released from a planetary launch of a 6,000 ton vehicle would be equal to a 10-megaton nuclear blast (roughly one worldwide instance of cancer per launch), even using thermonuclear blasts. Further refinements to the technology could significantly reduce that; and mankind has pursued far less interesting pursuits that have caused a great deal more fallout (and heighted rates of cancer) than a real, "nuclear" space program.
In an ideal world, we'd build a few *huge* orion stations, and launch them into orbit. I'm talk multi-million ton hulks. The fallout from these launches would be significant, but would still be smaller in magnitude than the fallout from the various nuclear weapons tests that occurred during the cold war. These stations would contain the industrial complex needed to build additional ships, and smaller vessels capable of mining the needed materials from the moon. Hopefully, there are sufficient levels of fissionable and fusible materials on the moon. At that point, man kind could return to using chemical rockets as ferries to get into space; to deliver small cargos and personnel to the constructions stations.
How would you pay for this venture? That begs the question: Whats the best way to profit of a massive nuclear pulse drive in space? To move asteroids! Mining of the asteroid belt would be a serious proposition, and the low gravity (and lack of atmosphere) makes the usage of our Orion drives even more palpable. It would be necessary to figure out a cheap way to return these metals to earth; however, initial studies have suggested that even very small asteroids (1 mile diameter) can contain tens of trillions of dollars of metals.
The loss rate would be terrific, but one could imagine breaking asteroids into 500 m chunks, surrounding them with layers of ceramic heat shield, and them aiming them for the middle of the ocean, Siberia, or other wasteland type area. I have a feeling we can devise a more elegant solution over time.
This could happen in our life
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
So you you're a twenty-something and you sign up for a one-way ticket to Mars. You're not leaving for 20 years, but, in the meantime, you can honestly say " I'm going to Mars and never coming back".
And blow off the "why". What possible reason is there to colonize Mars? Actually, an even better question is this: how can colonizing Mars pay off? Bear in mind that it would cost billions or even trillions of dollars to get a colony established on Mars. Also bear in mind that Mars is mostly made of iron oxide and silicates - just like earth. Leave aside the enormous initial investment, how would you even recover operating costs? There is literally nothing you could produce on Mars and deliver to markets on earth that you couldn't source more cheaply on earth.
Investors and/or taxpayers would have to shell out staggering amounts of money to make this happen... what's in it for them?
I agree here.
There's a logical fallacy that I haven't pinned down. If we want "to expand" then let's just properly use the earth we have and just pocket the advantages. I think Wikileaks is showing us we're also 20 years short of the political maturity needed to pull off an expedition.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
is that Denise Richards or Dina Meyer go too
When choosing a place to colonize, you want to select some place with natural resources and few detriments. In the case of the moon and Mars, you've got limited natural resources - plenty of rock, but not much else - and you've got a huge detriment: you spend all this energy getting out of Earth's gravitational well, just to arrive in another huge gravitational well?
No, we'd do better colonizing the asteroid belt. Tons of rock, and also water ice, and very little in the way of gravity wells to fight. And if the rock isn't that important (which it isn't, yet), we should be colonizing the Earth-moon Lagrange points. Closer, only one gravity well to fight with, and you can test your technology in a place where travel is almost free.
Please!
Currently It costs $10k/kg to get something to low earth orbit. I'm guessing $50 or $100k to get a kilogram to Mars. I don't think you'll be bringing a game server.
...and subjected them to the tortures of growing up, socially aclimating, dealing with capricious governments, selfish and ignorant individuals, crime, and random medical maladies. And who knows... YOU yourself could be the cause of pain for those children as well!
On top of that, Altruism is, in fact, not only selfish, because it's been medically shown to release endorphins in the brain as powerful as an orgasm, but that scientists are starting to show examples of altruism in nature and how it can be a survival trait. There really is no true unselfish act.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
So, you're planning on paying for the full cost of this trip to Mars? No? You want it funded by the taxpayers? Well, here's the answer to your final question then - the taxpayers will determine what's right.
If you want to throw your life away on a self-financed trip to Mars, knock yourself out. But if society's paying for it, society will decide whether it's moral.
Why is anyone even thinking about kids on Mars or "breeding teams"?
I think Elton John had it right in his song on this very theme, "Mars ain't no place to raise your kids". I can think of dozens of reasons that would be a Very Bad Idea, but the major ones:
Kids are a huge drain on resources-- not just the basic resources like food, water, and space that they'd consume, but also the time of the adult settlers who have to care for them and teach them. Mars settlers need sustainability more than they need their numbers replenished. In all likelihood, settlers would need to, on average, produce substantially more than they consume in order to get a colony set-up and make it viable. Once a colony reaches the level of sustainability that provides an excess capacity of resources (time, food, and water), then and only then would children be feasible within the colony.
It's also pretty unethical to birth a child, who had no choice in the matter, into that sort of lifestyle. Yes, that argument could (and maybe should) also be made for a number of lifestyles, such as poverty or war, but it is possible to get past those situations with enough effort or a migration. Until 2-way travel is established, life in a Mars settlement is the only possible option for a child born there. Putting someone in that position who never consented to it is kind of shitty.
On a related note, it probably wouldn't matter what age of adults went on the voyage, within a reasonable range, say 21-50. Not everyone would need to be young, only in reasonably good shape and able to contribute. Just like how a military tends to work, the younger, inexperienced people would do most of the labor and take the physical risks, while the older and more experienced folks would probably be able to contribute more knowledge and experience to the effort, as well as performing lighter labor. There's also the advantage of not having as much "life" to lose if something goes horribly wrong and the settlers' lives are cut short. Regardless of how or when they might die, which all the settlers will do sooner or later, they'd just become soylent anyway. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how it would have to go down, at least for a while, there is just too much water and useful stuff in a corpse to let it go to waste in a resource-starved colony.
Right, but sending Spirit and Opportunity were pretty cheap. Sending people (and their associated life support equipment) is staggeringly more expensive. You get more bang for the buck with the rovers.
Yes, but what if I don't agree that colonization is a worthwhile goal? How will you convince me?
Everyone seems to just accept space colonization as an end in itself, without any thought of why you'd want to do it (given the enormous cost).
You compared kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers to a PRIVATELY FUNDED ONE-WAY MISSION TO MARS. You are the idiot here, that's for sure. It's in no way "society" that will be dictating if a private mission of explorers/colonizers/whatevers will take off, and that's the way it should be. If you think otherwise, then yes, you are forcing your morality on people.
I don't think we even disagree - I'm onboard with the idea that space exploration is an investment in knowledge that's totally worth making.
Colonization is something totally different. A colony either has to become self-sufficient or be permanently subsidized by the mother planet. And both the initial establishment and operating costs are likely to be so high that they dwarf any potential return on the investment.
Then we can find that alien artifact and start watching Dead Space irl instead of on our HDTVs.
Someones got a bit overexcited about the unmanned test of a Dragon capsule. Its pure fantasy to imagine that a few tinkerings by SpaceX and Virgin Galactic amount to the Invisible Hand conquering space any time soon.
If you seriously want to exit Earth, you need to starting thinking about how to restructure society to look beyond the quarterly report.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Not that the planners would let him; but any "middle aged to retired man" who consumes a martian launch spot is suffering from a different flavor of selfishness. Unless the costs come down by a fair few factors of ten, there is no case to be made for sending any but the healthiest, expected-to-last-longest, specimens...
The proposed trip to Mars is one-way. It isn't the Earth, so all the environments that we have evolved to survive in don't exist. Additionally, at a mere 10 month trip time, more colonists could be sent up in short order. Thus, you don't need the expected-to-last-longest specimens. You need healthy specimens who hold expertise in a variety of fields who are willing to die. I think you will find a good number of empty-nesters may fall into that category (as the young ones more often than not lack the desired experience). Thus I think this suicidal crew would consist predominantly of fairly healthy 35-55 year old members, and not the younger crew you seem to expect.
Unless, of course, the final selection for the crew is selected by a reality TV show... wait, I think I just found a way to secure their funding! Heck, imagine getting voted off that version of survivor!
You are confusing government and society.
Nothing (at least with extremely few exceptions) the government does benefits everyone, or is accordance with everybody's beliefs.
In fact, what a government does often directly benefits only a fairly small minority of the population.
This, on the other hand, would benefit a huge majority, at the expense of an extremely small number of volunteers.
There is no "sacrificing" involved. It's ridiculous comparing them with people committing suicide in somebody else's name, any more than is to say that a smoker is someone committing suicide in the name of Marlboro. The people involved simply choose to spend the remainder of their days in a different way than what they would otherwise have done (with an additional health risk, obviously - many professions involve that). People do the same thing every day. Every time somebody moves somewhere, switches jobs, breaks up with someone, gets married and even unfrieds someone on facebook they affect the way they will spend the rest of their lives. They voluntarily chose to modify how the rest of their lives will look. There is no sacrificing involved, only choice.
May we live long and die out
Perhaps, in defense of the GP, the wording can easily make it sound like you were passing judgment instead of making an observation. You're mostly right, though. Hey, assisted suicide is still a crime in 47 states, and even then it's only legal if the person is terminally ill and can self administer the lethal dose.
But then, it doesn't absolutely have to be certain death with no hope of returning, it is merely going without a way back. It's not inconceivable that we send a return/rescue mission later on, though he'd have to do some serious training to get his body back into shape to survive Earth gravity, let alone the stress of reentry. Maybe by then we have a rotating "reconditioning" spacecraft complete with physician(s) that gently brings him back up to 1g.
society will not condone what society does IN ITS OWN NAME
its not about imposing anything on anyone
now mod me into oblivion, scream at me invectives
society will not send people on a one way trip. they just won't
you can deal with that, scream at me, whatever
that's just the way it is, sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
suicide: sound of mind, unsound of body, ok
unsound of mind, sound of body, not ok
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But have to disagree with the message. We can not be seen as dumping/abandoning people in space. Dr. Davies' concept for crew transit has much merit but only if it becomes a sustainable method of transportation. We need to plan for the first crews to Mars but also for 10,000 people there.
We also need to plan for surface-to-orbit and Earth-return not just brush those aside. Cost-benefit to Mars orbit-only or orbit-early also need to be performed. Just dropping a crew on the surface has some serious unknown issues.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
This could happen in our lifetime. We could already be living this if NASA hadn't given up on Orion in the 1960s because of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This is the future of space travel, not tiny chemical rockets which cost tens of thousands of dollars to move a kilogram.
Are there any useful countries that aren't party to that treaty? Some who might like large multinational and small space-technology companies to reside there?
Israel comes to mind. They have the tech too, but sadly they're far too concerned about being attacked by nutbar jihadis to consider doing any kind of awe-inspiring stuff like this.
Oh come on, you are so harsh. After all, Australia at least has beer - and air!
Mind you, there are some Australians I wouldn't mind seeing on Mars, preferably without a return journey, or indeed any possibility of communication, but that's just me being mean.
Oh all right. I admit we have a lot of flat red soil. And sun. And emptiness.
"Cats like plain crisps"
Colonising Mars as a financial investment? Problem is, we can't guess what having a whole new civilisation in this solar system might be worth. How about Italy? Remember Arthur C Clarke's book 3001, where a Near Earth Object takes out Italy? Surely having brothers and sisters out at Mars, also peering into the night sky from their perspective and their own eventual ability to build rockets, might pay off even if it just results in stopping that one big rock with our name on it.
;-) More seriously, who can imagine what technical problems they will need to solve and what all of humanity will learn as a result. We build the internet and the next thing you know whole new industries are opening up. We build a Martian Colony... and who knows? It sounds worth doing.
However, that's not my only bet. Who can guess what sitcoms will come from Mars? What would a Martian Simpsons look like?
Let's send the hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants and telephone sanitisers.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
The admittedly limited definition matches up well with Southern African politicians. Please can we send them? (You will just have to include some of their family on the 'preferred providers' list though)
Ok, name something. Your taxpayers and/or investors are going to need more to go on than "we'll think of some valuable product later".
No one has stepped up so far, and in any case, even Bill Gates wouldn't have enough money to fund this himself. This kind of an effort would more or less require government involvement.
You're willing to pay more taxes to get this done. Now all you need to do is convince at least 50% of the other 2.999 x 10^8 Americans to go along. The point here is you can't just wave away the problem by saying "well, it's only money". Because it's really a colossal amount of money.
But I don't accept that premise. There's absolutely nothing to indicate that space travel is going to get radically better/cheaper. If you don't agree, name some promising technology that's going to get us there.
Yes. Lots of countries are not going to be among the first. I'm guessing they'll be just fine.
I've never quite understood why, as a society, we pretend that our imperial adventures are free. We probably would get more out of a Martian colony than we did with the whole Iraq/Afghanistan mess... but that's not a very high bar to clear.
In the end, I don't think this changes much, though. For whatever reason, the cost of our staggeringly dumb wars is swept under the rug, but other stuff has to be justified.
Which means it's inevitably an economic question.
Sure, it could come later. Provided there's at least some realistic chance it comes at all. But I've never heard any compelling case for a payoff of any kind.
People are simply not going to make an investment of this size without an idea that they're ultimately going to get something worthwhile in return.
... whose permission you're going to need to proceed. The point is that I'm a representative taxpayer, a majority of whom you WILL need to convince. And so far, there's no compelling case to do this.
It's nice to think that a private company would do this, but private companies are even more bottom-line focused than the government. The fact that no companies have even begun to make investments toward the goal of a Martian colony is telling - they don't see any potential profit. Not to mention the fact that up-front costs are almost certainly going to be too high for any private outfit to bear, particularly given the level of risk.
In fact, starting colonies without any possibility of making money is more or less never what we as people do. With a few religiously motivated exceptions, almost the entire history of exploring the New World was done with the idea that the Old World was going to exploit it for resources and/or set up profitable colonies.
This is still just begging the question. Sure, if it's cheap, then there's no reason not to do it. But it currently costs around $10k/kg just to get stuff to low earth orbit. Getting to Mars is going to be much more expensive on a per kilogram basis, and you'd have to send a staggering number of kilograms.
The fact that no private company has even begun to invest in a Mars colonization project is telling - it means that they don't see a profit to be made. And again with the "if it's sustainable".
Along with your independence, you seem to have given up any and all capability of detecting sarcasm that's so thick, it drips of.
How can it not be obvious that GP was being sarcastic?
One, there may be an endless supply of people who want to go to Mars, but they can't afford it - as a reminder, it costs $10k/kg to get to low earth orbit. So just to get an 80 kg man to LEO would cost $800,000 - and that's just his body. He's presumably going to need housing, clothing, food, oxygen, and lots of various sorts of machinery, but just the $800k to get his body into orbit is going to be out of reach of almost the entire population of the earth. Bill Gates could afford it, but I doubt there are very many people that rich who are interested in chucking it all to become Martian colonists.
Two, everyone likes to talk about the valuable minerals to be found in space. Ok, name some. Bear in mind that Mars is made primarily of iron oxides and silicates, just like earth. And even if you could find something valuable there, the cost of recovering it is prohibitive - someone on here did the math, and found that even if the surface of Mars was littered with platinum bars, you couldn't economically recover them. Costs to get there and back are too high. It's not a question of capability - the technology exists or could be developed. It's a question of economics.
Three - the He3 canard. For one thing, He3 may be more abundant on the moon than on earth, but you're still only talking about .01 ppm. You'd have to grind up the entire moon to get any significant quantity of He3. And further... call me when we think of an actual (vs. theoretical) use for He3. Evidently it would make good fusion fuel... if we knew how to do controlled fusion. But we're (still) a long way from that.
I'd really like to see a good argument for interplanetary colonization, but this is must more question-begging and handwaving.
Dude, you can't just deploy the word "terraforming" and wave away the problems with this. We don't have the faintest idea how to do terraforming, and it almost certainly can't be done. For one thing, even if you were able to create an acceptable atmosphere, you'd have to add considerable mass to Mars and generate a planetary magnetic field to prevent it from escaping/sputtering off.
Further, there are about a billion acres on earth that are 1) unoccupied, 2) easier to get to, and 3) much more hospitable than the surface of Mars. Once we fill up the Gobi Desert and Antarctica, then maybe I'll believe there's a big demand for off-world real-estate. Until then... not so much.
If there's anything we've learned over the course of history, it's that people can't keep secrets. The US couldn't keep its hydrogen bomb secrets, and if that can't be done, there's no way this would work. Mean time until secret is revealed seems to drop exponentially with the number of people involved, and this project would require tons of people involved. So I doubt this will be happening.