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Richard Branson 'Determined To Start a Population On Mars'
RocketAcademy writes "British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company is backing the development of SpaceShip Two, has told CBS News he is 'determined to start a population on Mars.' He said, 'I think over the next 20 years, we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space and that will give us the financial resources to do even bigger things. That will give us the resources then to put satellites into space at a fraction of the price, which can be incredibly useful for thousands of different reasons.' Branson isn't the only billionaire interested in the Red Planet. Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), wants to put humans on Mars in the next 12 to 15 years."
Familiar with Branson's previous shenanigans, I must wonder: does he intend to impregnate all the women before they leave for / on the way to Mars?
Or will they forget the robots?
Please. We beg you.
I call dibs on first job interview for lead IT tech on the mars settlement.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I like (no, love!) the idea of colonists living in space.
On the other hand, has this man taken even a cursory glance at the spreadsheets before making such pronouncements?
For that many people, we're talking more money than he, Gates, and four other random billionaires combined have.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Freaky deaky Richard Branson. He wants some green strange.
I'm trying not to judge.
How exactly do you feed people on the journey to Mars, what do they eat when they finally get there, and what type of food will even survive that long?
I haven't given this much thought, but it seems that food might be the hardest obstacle for longer travels. Screw muscle atrophy and bone density issues - how do you FEED travellers to Mars?
What are those people going to be doing on mars that will justify the enormous expense of keeping them alive? Ultimately this is the problem with most Mars or Moonbase plans: there needs to be a compelling reason to be there. Something you can't do on Earth or in Earth orbit. It's going to be hard to be productive when most of your energy is going to just keeping people alive.
If we had some magical way of getting the people there without spending millions of dollars on fuel alone it could be useful as a lark and to learn about survival in extreme environments, but the costs are just too high for someone (anyone) to fund a project like this out of their own pocket. For the price of setting up a Mars colony you could convert a sizable percentage of the worlds power requirements over to renewables for instance.
I read the internet for the articles.
How can you not love this guy?
Everything else about this man, his wealth, or his goals aside - this is a good thing. A great thing. Having people with the resources to make progress pushing us to get off our dumpy human butts and really settle space beyond our own planet is going to be a net win for our species. It will lead to more jobs, advances in technology, advances in art (I can't wait to read the first poems written by native Martians!). We'll up our chances of surviving a number of extinction level events, and edge ourselves ever closer to exploring beyond our tiny little solar system. To get us started, it just takes an insane impulse, strong will, and the resources to burn. Full speed ahead!
The last time a human left Eartth's orbit was 40 years ago (Apollo 17 mission in 1972), not sure why it's suddenly going to happen again now.
and insane are not mutually exclusive.
Just saying ...
...so far (the latter even "to die on Mars, just not on impact"), and how two guys are going to start a population together shall remain the greatest mystery of Mars. ;-)
So tired of hearing about sending doomed people to the red planet. This is an engineering task so vast in scope and financial cost that it is going to have to be multiple countries working together in such a way that they never have, and likely never will, to get and stay there, alive. It is laudable that the likes of Branson and Musk are willing to spend vast sums of investors wealth to try and get there but to what end? To say that they did it? So what! Start on the moon, likely Heinlein was rather accurate about how things could unfold in getting there and possible ways of exchanging materials. It would also be a far more accessible local if something were to go wrong with at least a slim chance of rescue or escape. Energy harvesting the whole solar cycle could also be easier since the cold on the dark side is in the area where super conductors start to work. Communication is far simpler as well and does not require a dish the size of a small city. The delay is shorter too.
These guys want to do it by 2023 - one way trip with a reality show...I'd sign up if it wasn't for the TV aspect. A bunch of stinky meat bags crammed into a tin can with no make up artists...I'm sure it'll be great.
http://mars-one.com/en/
easy, just send them more people.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Alternative headline: "Branson wants to fuck off to Mars." Can't wait.
bang goes my karma... again...
Populating Mars. Hundreds of thousands of people in space. It's a nice dream, but there's some serious limitations that he's going to have to overcome.
Simply put, space is expensive. Unless we developed some sort of space elevator, we'd have to burn a hell of a lot of fuel to get people into space, not to mention all the supplies they'd need to sustain themselves for any length of time. And you would have to have some reason for them to go. Some way to make money up there. Like mining the moon for fuel. Or gathering rare-earth materials from asteroids. The old-hat idea in sci-fi books was that manufacturing in zero-G would have some sort of miraculous benefit which would justify the cost.
There are loads of other benefits if we can develop the sort of material that would be needed for a space elevator. Long lasting ribbons of carbon-nanotubes giga-pascals strong. I'm just saying there are a few other applications other than a space elevator. And once you have something to climb, it's not like you can simply ride the thing to the top. At 90 miles an hour, it would still be a week before you reached GEO. You have to power it somehow. Wireless energy transmission, like with lasers or something is looking like the best bet at the moment, and there are still serious issues and limitations to be overcome.
And sadly, some of these limitations may never be overcome. Alternatives may never be found. It might simply be impossible.
But it'd be a really good thing to try and overcome those problems. Good as in the advancement of the human species sort of good.
Of course, this guy is probably a little out of touch. Did he really use the term "ordinary" next to a price tag of $200,000?
I can think of a LOT of people that I would love to see on Mars. That way we could clean up our planet by creating another Botany Bay and sending some politicians and criminals to Mars.
Hey, it worked for Australia...
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Branson and the others are assuming the costs of transporting and maintaining life on Mars drops exponentially in the next 10 to 15 yrs to make it plausible. I really doubt they are basing this projection on current costs and efforts required.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
What's the cost of putting someone in space, vs grown in orbit?
In another 2,000 years, in one of the Martian churches of The Blessed Richard, children will be taught how the creator looked out over the land and saw it was arid and lifeless.
On the first day, The Blessed Richard said, "let there be light", and there was light. On the second day, The Blessed Richard said, "let there be water", and the canals of Mars were over-flowing with water... You get the picture?
Oh, and the first book of Martian scripture can't be called Genesis because Phil Collins has it copyrighted!
I sure hope he's better at running a space colony than he is at running a cell phone company.
... 'Determined To Start a Population On Mars'
Worker drones.
The human race fucked this planet up; so I don't understand why they believe they have some right to go fuck up other celestial bodies. (Moon, etc.)
Leave Mars alone.
What do these guys know that we don't?
Seriously, this sounds way out there. But then again, heavyer than air flight did sound so too, just a few years before the wright brothers finally found a solution to all the problems Lilienthal and others had been battling with. As did portable mass market Cray 2 supercomputers you can hold in your hand and make phonecalls with. ... And are mostly used to make fart noises and play Angrybirds.
Another question would be: For these guys to be right, which three things would be the most important to get developed within the next 10 years to make mass space travel and exploration viable?
From the top of my head, I get this:
- Massive cheap manotechnology or some sort comes to mind, for building a space elevator or some kind of super-cheap super-fuel, or both. Also supercheap super sturdy space ship hulls and stuff.
- Some serious biotech, maybe mixed with nanotech, to provide for pratically endless food, recycling of waste of all kinds and huge, i.e. magical advancements in medicine.
- What else? Don't know ... any ideas what we still need? ... Oh, yes, a completly new energy source. Something like Mr. Fusion in "Back to the Future". Nothing short of that will get us into space in a way Branson envisions it.
I'd says the following is given: Nobody is flying to mars using conventional recycling techniques like chemical air refreshment and nobodys ever doing large scale space travel with todays conventional launching techniques. If there will be mass space travel, some sort of space elevator or sänger flying machines will have to be involved. That's what I would guess anyway.
I'm sorry, I don't see Bransons or Musks Vision come true anytime soon, not in my lifetime I expect. ... But please, go ahead and do prove me wrong.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Imagine how bad TSA is going to be on your pre-flight screening to go into space!
Clearly he hasn't heard of Mars One
Mrs Branson not so keen.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
. Or maybe an astronaut. Yeah. Like, be the first motherfucker to see a new galaxy, or find a new alien lifeform... and fuck it. And people'd be like, "There he goes. Homeboy fucked a Martian once.
better a brit then some crazed Yankee
So we now have Richard "Martian" Branson vs Newton "Moonbase" Gingrich? FIGHT!!
Of course the way things are going it's likely that either India or China will win both those races.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid...
Sorry Dick, in ten years or twenty years, not a single thing will have changed about space. It will still be an enormous, inimical, utterly hostile radiation-blasted vacuum with nothing in it.
It would be good to have people on another planets if a natural or unnatural disaster starts wiping us out here. After all, according to Agenda 21, in order to create a sustainable world on this planet we'll have to shed about 97% of our population by the end of this century. I figure the most likely way it will be attempted will be a re-introduction of smallpox or the introduction of something created from smallpox but with a higher kill rate.
Have any of the younger slashdotters ever been vaccinated against smallpox? I'd guess not since it was eradicated from the wild a few decades ago.
Is it just me or does going into space without the proper infrastructure a bad idea? I'd love it if he would invest in a space elevator instead.
Sir Richard Branson has a son, Sam.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2158511/Richard-Bransons-boy-marry-girl-Bella-just-months-family-wedding.html
If Richard Branson is so gung-ho in establishing a human colony in Mars - will he send his own son, on a one-way-trip to that red planet?
It is easy to want to do something - it is not-that-easy when that something requires some personal sacrifices.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. -Octavia E. Butler, 1993 The future is now, folks.
From a site I maintain: http://www.openvirgle.net/
On April 1st, 2008, a fierce discussion started at Google's latest effort, Project Virgle. It proposed a grassroots effort to get a colony on Mars. What they didn't expect is that the Internet would respond so positively to what was hastily discovered as an April Fools Joke. Dissatisfied with what that first 24 hours of discussion and work represented, a number of members struck out to do what Google thought was only a joke, and start a real grassroots effort to inhabit space. Thus OpenVirgle was born, with every intention of gathering talent from across the globe, and focusing it all on creating ideas and ways in which humankind can live sustainably in space using free and open source technology.
This project remains a place for all space enthusiasts to cooperate in a playful learning community of individuals and groups chaordically building free and open source knowledge, tools, and simulations, which lay the groundwork for humanity's eventual joyful, compassionate, and diverse expansion into space (including Mars, the Moon, the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe), and also pool our current resources to make all of these ideas a physical reality. We believe that humanity works much better when they work together, and that the fastest way to advance knowledge rapidly is to have it shared equally amongst the largest group possible.
OpenVirgle's mission is, first and foremost, the consolidation of information. There are many pro-space-settlement groups out there, each with great ideas. The problem is, they are all competitive for funding, and they can't seem to agree on space settlement tactics and technologies. We will attempt to bring together all of these ideas and all of this information, and put it all up for proper comparison and discussion. Hopefully, future groups, or future iterations of OpenVirgle ourselves, will be able to use this collected knowledge to "put our eggs into a few more baskets" than just Earth.
We hope to end a history of secrecy and paranoia surrounding high technology development, and bring us all together towards a larger shared purpose, pooling resources and sharing the benefits of our combined work with the entirety of the human race. Yes, it's idealistic, but all the best grassroots efforts are, and if you don't shoot for the stars, you will never leave the planet.
====
In practice though, over the last couple years, that energy has moved into the Open Manufacturing and DIY and Maker movements, which are more general. But the geenral idea is stil what will get us there. An SSI conference paper I presented on this theme in 2001:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
is forgetting the first rule for this type of spending:
Why start one population on Mars when you can start two at twice the price?
But before we put people on mars, shouldn't we grab a few of the right kind of asteroids and drop them on that rock? A few billion tons of water, at least? Maybe some carbon, too? Seems like it would be a lot more worrisome dropping that stuff on that rock after people have landed than it would be before.
.. and I am sure he will sell Mars for Billions, or Trillions if he can find a serious buyer, once it is all set up and running.. just like Virgin Mobile..
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Mars One is an existing plan to give volunteers a one-way trip to Mars. The mission will be paid by broadcasting every part of it, starting from the initial selection of candidates up to them living, working and dying on Mars, in a Big Brother like TV show.
and telephone cleaners.
You know why.
Jeez, when did Americans become whiny pussies? We used to be badasses, a shining symbol of freedom and courage. Now we're just money grubbing thugs who are willing to spend more money trying to install politicians in Middle Eastern countries than on mankind's progress. Sad.
WELL SPOKEN, SIR! Get this badass muthafucker on the next rocket to Mars with 10 fine women!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Algae?
Waterbears grown in a vat exposed to raw solar radiation in transit, collected and baked into a protein paste?
As long as you get rid of the notion of bigmacs and fries, and are willing to settle for "nutritious", things aren't so bad.
Cool, I already eat vegan so it's not even a stretch to subsist on a goopy nigh-inedible paste.
Branson, I'm in.
Oooh, sorry, I don't think you are. Tardigrades are technically animals, so you couldn't eat them if you are a vegan.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If you can colonize Mars, you can probably find a way to work around that with genetic engineering.
how two guys are going to start a population together shall remain the greatest mystery of Mars. ;-)
Transgender reproductive system transplant?
We saved earth when we captured the Oak Ridge Boys, Lee Greenwood, Kenny Rogers, and Ray Stevens. Oh yeah, and robbed Boxcar Willie's grave.
Have fun while you're here.
The idea that these entrepreneurs are opening space to the masses is sheer absurdity. The realistic costs involved will mean that ordinary plebs like us are confined to this rock for the rest of our lives. Having sucked this world dry of all the physical resources they can, exploited every idea from the public domain, the rich will declare they owe society nothing in return, then fuck off to another planet.
So, is SpaceShip Two going to be a kind of 'B-Ark'?
Where can I donate to help get this project up and running?
how two guys are going to start a population together
Easy - parallel universe. Worked for Lister.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
If you haven't read the story you should.
It is available for free at numerous web sites.
In the story, people were executed while being duped
with the pretense that they were being sent to a space colony.
Could Branson be this sinister ? The answer is most certainly yes, the man
has a set of morals on the level of a rattlesnake.
Why waste all that money now to make one thing that's a bit of a stretch with our current technologies when we can wait 50 years and then probably teleport to Mars with a $10,000 device? It's like building some big, elaborate $100,000 computer that takes up an entire room just to run some 8-bit encryption algorithm or something when you could just wait a decade or so and tada, there's something 100x better for $2000.
Mod me down for bashing the rich. These are people who want/will own the "Red Planet" and build their own perfect little kingdoms.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Seriously, once you're out of a gravity well, why crawl down into another one? For construction, there's meltable rock aplenty in the asteroid belts if you have mirrors and time. Water is your main problem, but that's what comets and/or asteroids are for. For that matter, there may be enough in the asteroid belt for practical purposes (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/11/ice_in_them_thar_asteroids/). A bunch of slow robots, slowly and carefully moving these into Earth orbit at the L5 points might do the trick.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
in Real Reality you never were these things. That was just a fantasy fable created so USA will get emigrants dumb enough to work for low wages.
"I think over the next 20 years, we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space..."
Well, I imagine you will take a few thousand people to space, until you have a really spectacular accident. Then we will see what happens.
I think Mars colonization is much further off than many people imagine.
Proverbs 21:19
Before billions are spent going to Mars, I'd like to see a self-sufficient or at least semi-self-sufficient colony go live in Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean for an extended period. That includes growing food, climate control, recycling air, getting along with each other, etc. If an extinction level event happened like a giant asteroid hitting the earth, I believe a successful colony living at the bottom of the ocean may have a better chance than one on Mars.
True, living in the south pole or 3 miles under water isn't as cool as living on Mars but if you really are concerned with the human race living past an extinction level event this would likely be a better choice.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Okay lets send Sir Richard a copy of Gerard O'Neill's "The High Frontier". Once you climb out of the gravity well we are at the bottom of here on Earth why would you put yourself at the bottom of another one?
Build cities in space! Lots of energy 24/7, lots of material, so why again would you put yourself at the bottom of another well?
Typically emigrants get better pay here than at home. Doesn't change the fact that there's nothing for them to do since most of the jobs got outsourced to their homeland instead.
The "fantasy fable" was real at one point so the corporations just bought the government and fixed the problem or set up shop elsewhere. Now we have America, Inc. determined to halt progress and defend their imaginary property at gunpoint. The future doesn't matter, only short-term profits.
Because gravity is needed for humans to breed .1%
Fertility trials in space have shown, for non-humans, that fertility drops to less than
Good news for humans - living in space won't result in an immediate population explosion due to the natural birth control
Bad news for humans - procreation may require IVF type support
Richar Branson is suffering from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger
Casteism