Over 1000 Volunteers For 'Suicide' Mission To Mars

New submitter thAMESresearcher writes with a few updates on Mars One: "The Dutch company Mars One is organizing a one way mission to Mars 2023. In a press release that came out today, they say they have over a thousand applicants already. In the press release they also mention that they are now a not-for-profit Foundation. It sounds ambitious, but they have a Nobel prize winner, an astronaut, and several people from NASA on their board." The actual selection process starts early next year.

Comments

They've already announced their picks for the crew

[crazyjj]

"We've carefully reviewed the 1,000 candidates who volunteered online and have put together a team of our finest candidates," said Mars One head Bas Lansdorp:

Captain:
Jack Meov

Pilots:
Bob A. Booey
Ivana Bloweau

Mission specialists:
Mike Hunt
Jean Luc Picard
George Washington
Richard Flair, N.B.

Just a few more Jedi Knights...

[Vexler]

...and we can call this mission "Outbound Flight".

I would go if there was a suicide booth

[erroneus]

The thing about suicide missions most people aren't considering is body disposal. There must be an effective and sanitary means of handling the body. It would be nice if they could make soylent green, but at the very least there should be a device which would render a body as "gone" in a clean and sanitary manner. A body disposal bot would be pretty ideal... "bring out your dead... bring out your dead..."

Anyway, I'd be all for it. I have produced three viable offspring and don't plan to produce more. If departure is within the next 20 years, I'll be a perfect candidate for such a mission... I doubt my wife would agree though.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[trout007]

On Mars it's known as Outside.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Anonymous Coward]

Last thing I heard, there is still no sign of life on Mars, so shouldn't "tossing the body out of the window" be perfectly clean and sanitary, as long as you don't mind seeing eternally-preserved bodies outside?

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Last thing I heard, there is still no sign of life on Mars, so shouldn't "tossing the body out of the window" be perfectly clean and sanitary, as long as you don't mind seeing eternally-preserved bodies outside?

We now know something about martian dust airflow, so you could probably get a rough calculation of how long it would take for a frozen corpse to be sandblasted beyond usable recognition...

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Anonymous Coward]

The microbes in your body and any brought along with the spaceship will make sure your corpse won't go to waste.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The thing about suicide missions most people aren't considering is body disposal. There must be an effective and sanitary means of handling the body. It would be nice if they could make soylent green, but at the very least there should be a device which would render a body as "gone" in a clean and sanitary manner.

Deathstills, clearly. A man's flesh is his own, his water belongs to the other astronauts.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be very interesting to find earth microbes that can survive on Mars. The low pressure will probably stop everything.
Maybe some can survive if the change to Mars conditions is done gradually.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally! The human body doesn't carry any microorganisms or anything.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[olau]

Perhaps your children wouldn't agree either?

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[rubycodez]

what nonsense: they would just bury the body on mars. plenty of sand and rubble there. problem solved. it will naturally mummify, by the way.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[erroneus]

My children understand me better than my wife does. They are a lot like me in most respects. I see life as a whole bunch of comings and goings. We only "mourn" when we have a body and a certainty that the last time has passed. We don't freak out when we part ways after lunch even if in reality, that might be the last time you see someone alive! So when you take it apart, you realize that the mechanism is based in no small part on the notion that it is final.

I would continue to be able to interact with them and so it would be little different than what we have now. We part ways and spend less time together. The magnitude of physical distance has little bearing on the notion.... only that there is a physical distance. These days, we try to plan time over holidays and stuff. My little one still lives with me though. So it would be best if he were on his own before I go off to Mars right? And between now and then, I hope to express my philosophies in a way that provides a useful framework for him to experience and manage life that works for him as I have with my first two sons.

That's parenting after all.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Runaway1956]

Body disposal? You're kidding me, right?

Why, exactly, do we dispose of bodies, here on earth? Partly to make the survivors "feel good". But, mostly because those bodies pose a health hazard to the people who live around wherever they fall.

There is no one on Mars who will be put at risk when a few bodies fall over, and begin to decay. Maybe the fellow adventurers will find the first few bodies to be objectionable. But, with a little spacing between adventurers, (you cultivate your cultivars on this side of the hill, and I'll take that side of the hill) no one will be worried about aesthetics.

Let them bodies lie. They'll decay, and become one with the soil. The next wave of adventurers will find some nice fertile soil in which to cultivate their own - spinach, or whatever.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[paiute]

Last thing I heard, there is still no sign of life on Mars, so shouldn't "tossing the body out of the window" be perfectly clean and sanitary, as long as you don't mind seeing eternally-preserved bodies outside?

We now know something about martian dust airflow, so you could probably get a rough calculation of how long it would take for a frozen corpse to be sandblasted beyond usable recognition...

GIS corpses on Everest. Probably a fair prediction.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[DrXym]

Throwing it out of the nearest airlock should suffice. Or maybe bring some pigs.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Runaway1956]

How about lichens?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

They grow in the most inhospitable places on Earth. They may possibly adapt to some of the more hospitable places on Mars. Given the chance, they may thrive, and change the face of Mars. Just scatter a bunch around in the best looking places, give it a thousand years, and take another look!

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[ColdWetDog]

That would contaminate the soil forever. One of the worst things we would possibly do in human history. Because from then on, we could never ever tell if there actually was life on mars, or if it was just something we brought there. It's in one category with global genocide, on the scale of how bad it is.

No more re runs of Prometheus for you.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[wonkey_monkey]

And let all that tasty flesh go to waste?

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[SilentStaid]

That would be an incredibly heavy load to first get to a space station. Even with commercial space flight taking off (teehee), you're still looking at a roughly estimated LEO payload cost per lb (kg) = $4,729 right now. So if you figure an even split between 25 men (180lbs) and 25 women (115lbs) all of whom should be physically fit so they conform to averages, you're bringing 4500lbs of male flesh, and 2875lbs of female flesh. To bring all 7375lbs of that to space you're looking at $34.876 mil just to bring the bodies up!

That doesn't include food, water, clothing, essentials, toiletries, and all the other crap that even the most realist of people would bring knowing that they're never, ever going to see their home world again.

Bas Lansdorp (Mars One's main entrepenure) has stated they'd use the Falcon Heavy launcher from SpaceX... a 125mil ship in its own right... that only gives them 117,000 pounds of total load just to get to LEO! Side note, he said that while talking about a reality TV show based on the 'astronauts'...

I'm just saying... this is a pipe dream still for private enterprise, a government could (and should) fund this... but I'm doubting this happens. Here's to hoping I'm wrong.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[mrbester]

Biltong

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[mrbester]

I got to "2875lbs of female flesh" and then my mind wandered to a very happy place.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[SilentStaid]

Replying to myself with the wiki excerpt... First 4 astronauts will cost 6 billion.

Mars One plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars. According to their schedule, the first crew of four astronauts would arrive on Mars in 2023, after a seven month journey from Earth. Further teams would join their settlement every two years, with the intention that by 2033 there would be over twenty people living and working on Mars.

As of June 2012, the mission plan is as follows:[4]
2013: The first 40 astronauts will be selected;[14] a replica of the settlement will be built for training purposes.[9]
2014: The first communication satellite will be produced.
2016: A supply mission will be launched during January (arriving October) with 2,500 kilograms (5,500 lb) of food in a 5 metres (16 ft) diameter variant of the SpaceX Dragon.[9] The fallback if this is not ready in time is either to use a 3.8 metres (12 ft) Dragon or to delay by two years.[17]
2018: An exploration vehicle will launch to pick the location of the settlement.[9]
2021: Six additional Dragon capsules and another rover will launch with two living units, two life support units and two supply units.[9]
2022: A SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch with the first group of four colonists.[9]
2023: The first colonists will arrive on Mars in a modified Dragon capsule.[9]
2025: A second group of four colonists will arrive.[9]
2033: The colony will reach 20 settlers.[1]

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Quiet_Desperation]

I got to "2875lbs of female flesh" and then my mind wandered to a very happy place.

Man clearly likes his women on the large side.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[morgauxo]

-- That would contaminate the soil forever

Only if something manages to survive Mars' surface environment. That seems very unlikely. Now if you buried the bodies deep enough and did so very quickly... maybe... I doubt they would do that though, not unless it is determined that there is no native life first. Or.. native life is found and it turns out to be just the same microbes we have here already anyway (possible given meteor transport)

-- It's in one category with global genocide

Now you are assuming that not only do body microbes survive in the Martian environment (reasonable since freezing, desiccating low pressure environments with lot's of UV exactly mimics what microbes inside our guts see every day right?) but also that microbes adapted to our bodies' environment will actually out-compete native microbes which are adapted to the martian environment even in the martian environment

Yes, we do see non-native species out-competing native ones here on Earth but they are only crossing continents. Normally when this happens the new environment is quite similar to the old one with the exception of a lack in well adapted predators. This is hardly the same as taking a microbe adapted to the human body and putting it on Mars which is almost the exact opposite of the human body (warm, wet and well shielded from pretty much everything vs cold dry and without most of the protection from space which we enjoy at the Earth's surface)

-- we could never ever tell if there actually was life on mars

anything found on Mars that isn't found on Earth is probably Martian. Any fossil from before human presence is definitely Martian.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I would suspect that corpses dehydrate somewhat faster on mars(with the lower atmospheric pressure, sublimation is more likely than on Everest) and dessicated husks probably erode a bit faster; but you could certainly do worse as modelling goes...

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[interkin3tic]

IANA forensic microbiologist, but I'd guess that the decomposition wouldn't be complete. Anerobes in your body would probably do well, but there wouldn't be anything to eat outside in, and once the internal anerobes digested to a point where they were opened up to the external environment and exposed to mars, I would expect they'd die.

The leftovers and the bacterial byproducts would probably just sit there. So there wouldn't be a body sitting around, but I'd guess that there would be a partially decomposed and collapsed, dried out corpse that would look much more ghastly than an eternally preserved body or a simple skeleton.

On the other hand, you wouldn't need to bury a body very deep since there would be no scavenging animals to dig it up. Just bury it deep enough that the winds aren't going to expose it. Or drop the bodies off in a valley that you never had to look at until the next person died.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Andrio]

Here's an interesting thought. Should dead bodies have some kind of long-lasting metal tag to indicate that they were not native of the planet? Perhaps a simple diagram that indicates that this fossilized skeleton found is from the third planet from the sun, not the fourth?

Thousands, maybe millions of years from now the skeletons of these people may be found by non-human creatures (be it from Earth or from another planet). I'm sure they would have an appreciation of truly knowing the origin of these skeletons.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[DanielRavenNest]

Everything past 2013 is fantasy at this point, because they don't have funding. Mars One is just promotional advertising for a reality show based on selecting astronauts instead of surviving on a tropical island, that's all.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[LordOfTheNoobs]

Do insurance policies pay out for death due to acts of war god?

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Magnus Pym]

Maybe the organic matter would `seed' life on Mars a-la Prometheus.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[orgelspieler]

Hopefully nobody named Bill Tong signs up for the mission. He might get jerky.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Hans Adler]

Interesting idea, but I would hope that anyone going there from Earth would know precisely where the bodies came from, and when and why. And that anyone coming from elsewhere would be sufficiently advanced to realise that those guys can't have been endemic, what with containing lots of elements that are totally rare on Mars.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Half-pint HAL]

Quite. Anyone who would volunteer to spend 2 years with only 3 other people, and the next 2 with only 7 other people, is clearly a sociopath and not fit for such a mission....

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Golden_Rider]

The thing about suicide missions most people aren't considering is body disposal.

Well, they thought about that question:

http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/19-faq-health/205-what-if-one-of-the-mars-inhabitants-passes-away

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[lenart]

And why would that be a problem? We're not talking about a temporary experiment setup for fun. The goal is colonization! Looking at all previous colonization efforts (of which the USA is most probably the clearest example) contamination of the local flora and fauna is a certainty. Just look around and count the number of bison's, native americans and horses. As a reference, the continent used to be filled by the first two and devoid of the last (for the last 10.000 years or so of course).

In addition to that, would it not make sense to have the people on Mars search for proof BEFORE they kick the bucket? And when we contaminate the soil in a way that makes it impossible to detect signs of life native to Mars with our current detection techniques, we will have to invent new ones. It's been going on for about 150 years on earth. Hell, we've even found a name for it: Scientific Progress!

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[Americano]

Depends on the environment - anaerobes don't do well in oxygen-rich environments, but then, the atmosphere of Mars isn't exactly oxygen rich, and not all anaerobic bacteria are obligate anaerobes.

If the bacteria couldn't complete the job, then you'd dry out and mummify over time, leaving behind something that probably resembles Ötzi the Iceman. Of course, the body would still be subjected to the minimal weathering effects if left sitting unattended on the surface, so abrasion from dust moving around on the surface would take a toll over many years, too.

Likely you'd be some sort of mummified humanoid shape for thousands of years, with weathering taking a slow toll on the mummified remains.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[jonadab]

> [Lichens] grow in the most inhospitable places on Earth.

All of which places have substantial quantities of atmosphere.

Mars does not.

So unless you set up a sealed, controlled environment (like a terrarium or a dome), lichens won't do so well on Mars. Neither will much of anything else, with the possible exception of some bacteria and maybe a couple of other esoteric microbes. Or robots.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[khallow]

Doing "not so well" doesn't mean that they can't do well enough. I wouldn't rule out altogether an engineered species tailored for Mars.

It's worth noting that there is a huge gap between the worst survivable environments of Earth and the best of Mars. For example, the pressures that lichen survives at on Earth (roughly half of an atmosphere at 19,000 feet) and the best spots on Mars ( Hellas Planitia with a bit over 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure).

Carbon dioxide partial pressure is actually higher for Mars than Earth, but that's not going to be the main constraints on lichen growth. Nitrogen partial pressure would be about a thousand times less dense for Hellas Planitia so it's going to be very hard for lichen to fix nitrogen.

Similarly, temperatures are vastly colder even at the best spots on Mars (once again Hellas Planitia) with high summer temperatures near 0C (according to this site). Lichen could operate at the hottest parts of the day, but night time temperatures are around -50C in summer in the best location on Mars. So needless to say, until someone builds up a heat-preserving atmosphere, lichen is going to grow very little only in the warmest parts of the day during the warmest parts of the summer in a single deep impact crater on Mars.

So far, I just mentioned gaps in temperature and pressure, both which stop lichen on Earth apparently around 19,000 feet well above the levels found in Hellas Planitia.

Water is probably not that bad. It might even be liquid at rare times in Hellas Planitia. There might be enough vapor/frost for lichen to harvest water from air. I certainly wouldn't consider it as big an obstacle as the rest.

Finally, there's UV and cosmic radiation. This is a huge problem due to how slowly any lichen would grow on Mars. Even a very radiation resistant lichen will have to repair damage to its DNA at some point. And that will only be able to occur during the infrequent periods during the Martian summer day when it is remotely active.

So can it repair itself, while surviving and reproducing? I think so, but not with any currently living lichen on Earth.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[cusco]

It's called a 'compost pile', generally used to feed gardens to grow food and produce oxygen. The ultimate in recycling.

Damn, I'm too old or I'd sign up in an instant. Another eight years of putting up with me and I think my wife will probably be ready to seem me climb aboard the rocket as well.

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[CODiNE]

And then when you are ready to go in the suicide box you notice a hidden panel where inside are 100 clones of yourself! :-o

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[jonadab]

> Doing "not so well" doesn't mean that they can't do well enough.

I don't think you've grasped the magnitude of exactly how much atmosphere Mars doesn't have. The surface pressure is zero point something kPa. That's REALLY low pressure. Water at pressures that low is a vapor regardless of temperature. It can't solidify (on its own), let alone exist as a liquid. A standard college physics classroom vacuum pump can't create a vacuum with pressure that low.

For comparison, standard pressure on Earth at sea level is 101.325 kPa. On top of Mt. Everest, the pressure is about a third of standard, which is still somewhere around 50 or 100 times as much pressure as on Mars.

> I wouldn't rule out altogether an engineered species tailored for Mars.

To function in the near-vacuum of Mars, it would need to be engineered to be significantly different from anything found on Earth, except perhaps a small handful of anaerobic microbes, and I'm not even sure about those. Even most Earth life that can *survive* pressure that low can't perform metabolic functions to any significant extent without some source of metabolic gasses -- they just wait until they get some air and then start back up again. The ones that don't need oxygen generally need something else, and on Mars they won't have it -- unless you keep them in a pressurized container of some sort.

> It's worth noting that there is a huge gap
> between the worst survivable environments
> of Earth and the best of Mars.

Yes, exactly. It's not even really comparable.

> Carbon dioxide partial pressure is actually
> higher for Mars than Earth

I can cut a thirty-inch super-extra-large pizza into six slices and give you just one slice -- only a sixth of the pizza. Or, if you prefer, I can make a pizza an eighth of an inch in diameter and use a microscope and precision laser to cut that eighth-inch-diameter pizza into twenty slices and give you nineteen of those slices -- almost the whole pizza. Which is more? This is admittedly a simplification. Partial pressure does also matter, up to a point -- but only up to a point. When you're comparing the atmosphere of Mars to Earth, any small advantage Mars might have in the partial pressure department is overwhelmingly dwarfed to nothingness by the spectacular disadvantage in absolute pressure.

I do not for one minute believe that Earth's lichens (let alone the plain old green algae that terraforming enthusiasts always think is magic) will grow on Mars (except in a pressurized container). There isn't any air. Plants don't grow unless they're immersed in air (or water or something).

Re:I would go if there was a suicide booth

[AK Marc]

You could even call the tag a "tombstone".

Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[MADCOWbeserk]

I wouldn't be surprised if lots of guys didn't just volunteer their ex-wives.

Re:Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[Vanderhoth]

made me think of a quote from the new Star Trek movie.

"My Ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I have left are my bones."

Re:Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[hymie!]

"My Ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I have left are my bones."

That quote was one of the many many reasons I hated that movie. "Gee, we need to force a perfectly reasonable medical nickname onto this character. Is this mallet large enough?"

Re:Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[SternisheFan]

from wikipedia: McCoy was born in 2227. [2] The son of David, [4]:257-258 he attended the University of Mississippi [2] and is a divorcé. [5] In 2266, McCoy was posted as chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk who calls him "Bones". [2] McCoy and Kirk are good friends, even "brotherly". [4]:146 The passionate, sometimes cantankerous McCoy frequently argues with Kirk's other confidant, science officer Spock, [1] and occasionally is bigoted toward Spock's Vulcan heritage. [6] McCoy often plays the role of Kirk's conscience, offering a counterpoint to Spock's logic. [1] McCoy is suspicious of technology, [7] especially the transporter; [2] as a physician, he prefers less intrusive treatment and believes in the body's innate recuperative powers. [1]

The character's nickname, "Bones", is a play on sawbones, an epithet for physicians, [8] in particular, those qualified as surgeons. [9] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_McCoy#section_1

A sawbones is a slang term used to describe a physician, and more specifically a surgeon, especially one who would have served in battle. The term is often tied to the Civil War, but in fact predates it. Dickens uses it to refer to a doctor in the 1837 novel Pickwick Papers which suggests common use of the expression at least 20 years prior to usage during the American Civil War. http://m.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-sawbones.htm

Re:Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[TheLink]

Ex-wives? How about certain politicians or other widely unpopular people?

Years ago I thought of a pseudo-reality TV programme called "Vote Them Off The Planet". With 1 way and return options.

Of course for various reasons the 1 way would be more of a joke (try to interview them etc) - except if the winners choose to pay for their return trip, you'd send the winners for that category too.

I believe it's only tens of millions to send someone to orbit. Might actually be able to fund it via expensive text message voting :).

Re:Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[quenda]

I'll volunteer! Love the uniform with the black pants and red shirt.

Re:Have the actually verified the Volunteers...

[Wolfrider]

--There are indeed, many many reasons to hate that movie. I don't care if Leonard Nimoy endorsed it - that abortion of a so-called "reboot" is NOWHERE NEAR Star Trek Canon quality in MY book.

/ also mutters about Highlander 2 and 3, and the saving grace of Adrian Paul for "Endgame"
// check out Diane Duane's ST novels if you want REAL Canon-worthy ST ;-)

Too old in a decade

[sometext]

I wonder how many of their applicants will be too old by 2023.

Re:Too old in a decade

[mark-t]

Let me guess.... you're under 25, right?

I mean, if you really think that a decade is going to make that much difference....

Re:Too old in a decade

[Immerman]

Why have a cap at all? I've known active people in their 80s who are stronger, healthier, and have greater endurance than most twenty-somethings while still being "all there" mentally. Seems to me they would have at least as much to offer as younger candidates, and as long as the odds still strongly favor an accident over collapsing health as the cause of death then their age is unlikely to be a factor.

Re:Too old in a decade

[Reapman]

I disagree with your example, but not completely with what your trying to say.

80 is far too old. You'd have to put in to your calculations the odds of someone surviving, and at 80 I would say you have a greater risk of health issues, even if your healthier then most 30 year olds in a lot of respects.

I think a mix of ages would be best.. because your looking at such a long period of time, you woun't have anyone under say 35 probably eligable for this, so I'd say 35-60 or so might be good.

Re:Too old in a decade

[Immerman]

I'll admit I was a bit hyperbolic, but it would depend highly on the mission parameters, it all comes down to individual risk assessment. How long can a crew member reasonably be expected to survive in the absence of health problems? If an applicant can reasonably be expected to survive notably longer than that without developing health problems then their age is a non-issue. 80 is *probably* too old - but an 80 year old with no signs of any impending health problems and a family history of everyone living into late nineties in near-perfect health may be a safe bet. (I'm talking age-at-departure here, not current age)

Remember too we're talking about the first-wave mission here, which will be much riskier than later follow-up missions that will have substantial infrastructure waiting for them. Moreover public perception will be *extremely* important to there being a follow-up mission at all. As such it may be desirable to choose older candidates so that the almost-inevitable deaths of some of them can be more readily accepted. A silverback dieing while pushing the frontiers for his people is easy to spin as noble and inspiring sacrifice. Someone fresh out of college is more of a tragedy.

Moreover you have to keep in mind that they're likely looking for candidates that are extremely competent in several fields - a young person with such broad expertise is likely a highly motivated individual with a vibrant and engaging life and is unlikely to apply. Retirees on the other hand offer a large pool of people who are mostly just trying to keep themselves entertained until they die.

Re:Too old in a decade

[ultranova]

Why have a cap at all?

Because the younger you are, the longer you can work, which is important when sending you in the first place is so expensive. And this is ignoring the need to care for the retiree and simply assumes they'll march off the airlock when they're too feeble to work - but of course you can't actually do so or the morale collapses, and with it the entire colony.

Re:Too old in a decade

[Immerman]

Try reading beyond the first sentence. It depends heavily on the risk profile - as long as you're far more likely to die due to an accident than "old age" then it doesn't really matter how old you are to begin with, younger people will have just lost more potential longevity when the accident gets them. Besides, in most of the world throughout most of human history working until the day you died (or at least the week/month) was the norm, the elders simply take on the less physically/mentally demanding tasks (depending on the nature of their feebleness). Plus in 1/3 G physical feebleness wouldn't be nearly as big a handicap, and without medical facilities dedicated to highly profitable life extension the "feebleness window" would be much shorter anyway.

Re:Too old in a decade

[Reapman]

Those are actually some really good points... well said. Suffice to say I'm glad people smarter than I are in charge of this. If I was what they were looking for and in a different place in my life... I'd definitely consider something like this.

Re:Too old in a decade

[ultranova]

It depends heavily on the risk profile - as long as you're far more likely to die due to an accident than "old age" then it doesn't really matter how old you are to begin with, younger people will have just lost more potential longevity when the accident gets them.

If the colonists at 80 are more likely to die from accidents than old age, the colony has no chance of survival whatsoever, because you simply can't replace the personnel fast enough. Also, any non-lethal accident that happens results in more downtime the older you get, because injuries heal slower. Finally, at 80, your body is basically at the brink of collapse and could die at any moment, no matter how healthy you might look; if you can only send 20 people it would be insane to waste space sending someone like that instead of someone at his prime.

It's a pleasant fantasy to imagine yourself forever young and strong, just wrapped in wrinkly skin, but it's just that: a fantasy.

Re:Too old in a decade

[Immerman]

True, but we're not really talking about colonists - those would come later. We're talking about the adventurers who go on ahead to establish a beachhead in hostile territory. If all goes well they'll become colonists themselves once there's enough people there to make it viable, but all will almost certainly not go well, so they're facing a much greater risk profile than those who will follow.

Also, I think I pointed out I was talking those rare 80 year olds that can reasonably expect to live to 100. For men at least that gives them ~5 more breeding years than a lot of people in say Africa, where the average lifespan is something like 28 years, and nonetheless manages to be responsible for most of the world's current population growth.

Re:Too old in a decade

[ultranova]

True, but we're not really talking about colonists - those would come later. We're talking about the adventurers who go on ahead to establish a beachhead in hostile territory.

We're talking about people who are supposed to establish and maintain large living quarters for later arrivals. This requires at least some of them to stay alive and functional until those later arrivals arrive. It doesn't matter if you call them colonists, pioneers or super janitors, the point still remains: sending a replacement takes hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, so you can't treat the crew as disposable.

Also, advertising this as an "adventure" attracts precisely the wrong crowd: the risk-takers. What you want is the types who obsessively check every last item in a hundred-item checklist every time they do a task, several times every day, for the rest of their lives.

Also, I think I pointed out I was talking those rare 80 year olds that can reasonably expect to live to 100.

As opposed to those plentiful 30 years old who can reasonably expect to live to 50? Who, because the pool is so much larger, almost certainly include people suitable in ways other than "is no likely to die of old age in the next few years"?

Look, I understand an 80 year old might want to go, but it just doesn't make sense to send him.

Au Contraire

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be a perfect candidate for such a mission... I doubt my wife would agree though.

Au contraire. Just last night she was telling me that she'd do anything to get rid of you.

I'm pretty sure she'd be a for shooting you at Mars.

Telephone sanitizers?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those 1.000 candidates are telephone sanitizers?

Collecting volunteers on the internet

[Hentes]

Shooting random volunteers on a one-way trip to Mars so they can Make a reality there? Sounds like a scam to me.

Re:Collecting volunteers on the internet

[Smidge204]

"Wanted: Somebody to go to Mars with me. This is not a joke. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed."

=Smidge=

Re:Collecting volunteers on the internet

[ndogg]

It's very dark on Mars, and don't even think about carrying a flashlight with anything else.

Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[eldavojohn]

Mike Hunt

Yeah right, you're trying to tell me that former Green Bay Packer Michael Anthony Hunt signed up for this? Mike Hunt received a total of two interceptions while playing only twenty two games. Mike Hunt knows how to play the field. It's ridiculous to think that we would waste Mike Hunt, a national treasure that has been enjoyed by millions of burly men, by putting Mike Hunt on a Mars suicide mission!

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[crazyjj]

Admittedly, Mike Hunt was quite a ballplayer.

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[yincrash]

I'm pretty sure the GP was talking about Michael Hunt the 12 time national champion roller hockey player. He's championed one of the greatest sports for so long, that he needed a new challenge. Mars.

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[kelemvor4]

Mike Hunt

Yeah right, you're trying to tell me that former Green Bay Packer Michael Anthony Hunt signed up for this? Mike Hunt received a total of two interceptions while playing only twenty two games. Mike Hunt knows how to play the field. It's ridiculous to think that we would waste Mike Hunt, a national treasure that has been enjoyed by millions of burly men, by putting Mike Hunt on a Mars suicide mission!

Maybe you missed the news. It's over for Mike Hunt, anyway - so he has nothing to lose. http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/05/0130229/brain-disease-found-in-nfl-players?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[fyngyrz]

Mike Hunt is the poster child for a career of being shafted. From his start with the Toronto Blue Balls, to his career-ending finale when he ill-advisedly swung at a pitch from Wrong-Hole-Harriet, Hunt moved deeper and deeper until the truth finally penetrated: All this time, they'd treated him like a dick. He knew it was time to pull out, and pull out he did. Some analysts think it's pushing it to say so, but those in the know speak of the collapse of walls of the sport, giving Hunt the nod for stretching it out as long as possible. Now Hunt seeks a private life, trying to avoid the press and the associated innuendo.

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful... "Mike Hunt" is a Bart Simpson prank... a fake name paged at Moe's Tavern. Maybe I missed the sarcasm, but it appears anyone that thinks otherwise is being gullible.

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[I Mean, What]

It's Amanda Hugginkiss, way to ruin the joke.

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[darkmeridian]

Are you kidding? Mike Hunt stinks! You have no taste at all, worshiping Mike Hunt.

Re:Not a Former NFL Linebacker!

[ericspinder]

As best as I can tell it was 'Porky's' reference originally, and yes you are missing the joke. The replies are very 'tongue in cheek'.

one condition

[tverbeek]

I'd go, but only if they offered reliable broadband internet access. (I'll put up with the latency as one of those facts-of-physics thangs.)

Re:one condition

[codewarren]

This isn't 30 second latency we're talking about. When mars is furthest from earth, best case latency is a whopping 42 minutes. That means after you click a link, the very best case is that there are 42 minutes before you get a reply.

Re:one condition

[TheGratefulNet]

no tcp being used? no arping? no nameserver i/o?

42 minutes (if you say so) for EACH PACKET, EACH WAY.

tcp/ip, in its current state, is entirely wrong for very long latencies.

Re:one condition

[Anonymous Coward]

so like comcast then?

Re:one condition

[codewarren]

No... it is 21 minutes for each packet each way. I've already thought of that, of course. 42 minutes is the round trip time. I've also assumed that TCP/IP is not being used, but some other protocol. Doesn't matter how good that protocol is, though, because you'll never beat 42 minutes during the time Mars is at its farthest from earth. This is why I say "best case"

You can have a proxy on earth for all the TCP/IP, arping, and nameserver I/O. You just need a way to send data to that proxy when you click a link, and a way to get all the data to construct the web page back from the proxy so that you can reassemble the page on Mars.

There are of course other considerations. Data from Mars will have to be error tolerant because any retransmission would add another 42 minutes, so redundancy will have to be built in, thus reducing bandwidth. Ditto for the return trip. That's all very fascinating but my point is just that this idea that you can browse the internet for the rest of your life doesn't seem so great when everything you do takes 42 minutes to be actualized.

Re:one condition

[BonzaiThePenguin]

That's why you open 100 tabs and read one while the other 99 are in various states of reaching Earth. Pipelining, baby.

Re:one condition

[rubycodez]

Protocols for human networked space comm are already in design (see recent slashdot article). Fetching news and entertainment content would not be a problem, nor would sending replies to groups on a usenet type server network. Of course, being a pioneer in space exploration means enduring hardship and extreme risk.

Re:one condition

[queazocotal]

Well, yes, and no.
Fetch all pages to a depth of three clicks on a fetch, and you've gotten to 14 min a page.
Preload sites you regularly visit.
There will be some commonality between the requested pages for the Aeronauts, so caching helps.
Randomly clicking around will be tedious at best.

But, you can have slashdot, xkcd, wikipedia all effectively 'live'.
Youtube would be challenging, for more than your subscribed channels.
netflix et al would be fine.

Re:one condition

[Gilmoure]

First send a really big proxy server into Mars orbit, so that all the porn and torrents are up to date by time splat landers get there?

Re:one condition

[Issarlk]

except you could get a whole site capture as a reply. Admitedly it wouldn't work with very dynamic content.

Re:one condition

[bluefoxlucid]

just get a Netflix local data center box that caches not just what's been watched in the past 3 months, but also caches anything that it feels like suggesting you watch, and any related things (watch Star Trek? Cache all the Star Trek movies, cache the first three episodes of each season of EVERY star trek series, cache the season you're watching starting going forward from which episode you're on).

Re:one condition

[Anonymous Coward]

columbus could only have dreamt to be able to send messages back to europe in ~20 minutes.

personally, i'd volunteer to settle mars in a heartbeat if i thought there was a chance in hell they'd choose me.

Re:one condition

[shutdown -p now]

Where does your 42-minute figure come from? So far as I can see, even assuming that the longest distance between Earth and Mars is when both planets are in their respective perihelions directly opposite across the Sun (which is the very worst hypothetical case, right?), it all adds up to 334 million kilometers, or 18.5 light minutes.

Re:one condition

[codewarren]

The aphelion of Earth: 152,098,232 km.

The aphelion of Mars: 249,209,300 km.

Maximum distance: 152,098,232 + 249,209,300 = 401,307,532 km.

Speed of light: 300000 km/sec = 1338 light seconds = 22 light minutes.

22 light minutes represents worst case one way if the orbits were perfectly opposing, but they aren't. The actual figure is closer to 21 light minutes. Round trip therefore is 42 minutes latency.

Re:one condition

[shutdown -p now]

Ah, I've mixed up aphelion and perihelion again - sorry about that.

Re:one condition

[Lost Race]

Radio waves are slower than light, period

???

Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation, which propagates through vacuum at the speed of light.

Re:one condition

[tverbeek]

Two words: caching and batching. Interactivity is too much like dealing with people anyway. :)

Legalize on Mars

[Prokur]

Seems that they gonna find some water to grow the weed there

Hmmmmm

[slashmydots]

And yet when my company kills people as a cost cutting measure, ohhhh, suddenly that's illegal, lol.

Re:Hmmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You're doing it wrong. You shouldn't fire these people, you should promote them to 'Chief Mars Officer'

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[cheaphomemadeacid]

Yeah you're right, we should never have climed down from the trees, or walk out of the sea for that matter...

I guess...

[Jintsui]

We need over 1000 more beds in a mental hospital...

Re:I guess...

[frostfreek]

Astronaut Psychiatric Self Evaluation Questionaire
Please mark all that apply with an X

1) [ ] I am crazy enough to want to go to Mars

Thank you for completing this questionaire.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ledow]

I think that even some royalty probably said the same about traders who crossed the Atlantic, or tried to climb certain ranges of mountain to get to the next village, or ride the around around certain Cape around South Africa at some point.

You don't need to be stupid to want to go live on a planet of your own (effectively), especially if follow-up missions are likely. You *do* need to screen people for suicidal tendencies, because that can be a major factor - but there's nothing to say that a perfectly sane person wouldn't choose suicide in tough circumstances like they are likely to face anyway.

In fact, one of Man's greatest moments was called "stupid" at the time and ended up suicides. Or you wouldn't know *shit* about the South Pole now.

"I may be some time" doesn't ring a bell about one of our greatest explorers ever?

Elon Musk wants 80,000 colonists

[WillAdams]

"SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants to create a colony on Mars consisting of a population of 80,000, ferried to the planet in a reusable rocket. For the initial trip, the rocket would contain fewer than 10 humans, and enough equipment to found a colony ready for the other 79,990."

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/what-do-we-know-about-elon-musks-plan-mars-colony

Re:Elon Musk wants 80,000 colonists

[bluefoxlucid]

The problem is energy. We're going about this wrong, putting people on mars first. It's totally irresponsible and poorly thought out.

Stage 1 is to launch solar arrays. Photovoltaics break down; but in a vacuum they'll last forever. Put the arrays up, have the near arrays tight-beam concentrated energy to far collectors. Have the far collectors tight-beam energy (laser, non-ionizing gamma) at a collector on the planet. You can even use a black body sterling collector hooked up to geothermal cooling, because hell it's -135C there (or 35C when warm). Ionosphere and atmospheric effects are minimal on Mars, for some strange reason.

Energy means heat. Heat means life. Plants collect sunlight to excite an electron off a chlorine atom in a complex molecule, which then provides activation energy to bind water to carbon and split off oxygen from CO2. Simultaneously in day and exclusively at night, plants absorb oxygen and combine it with the bound sugars to release heat, supplying activation energy for cellular processes. Other organisms consume the plants, or other organisms, gaining access to compounds created in this manner; eventually they break things down into sugars or fatty acids, which then get oxygenated to produce combustion, releasing heat and powering cellular processes.

Energy can power artificial and natural respirators. Plants, animals, scrubbers and synthesizers. This keeps you alive.

Re:Elon Musk wants 80,000 colonists

[Jeremi]

Wouldn't sending a nuclear power source be more practical and reliable? It works for Curiosity...

Re:Elon Musk wants 80,000 colonists

[bluefoxlucid]

More risk and harder to maintain, more expensive, etc. An emergency nuclear power shutdown could take longer to repair than it would for everyone to die. Resupply involves a long delay.

Funnly last sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who misread it as "The natural selection process starts early next year"?

Re:Funnly last sentence

[Xtifr]

Oh damn, you beat me to it. Well at least I now know that I'm not the only one. :)

Re:WATER?

[rudy_wayne]

Where the hell are they going to find water? Shipping it surely isn't an option....

Don't call me Shirley.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Bardez]

Those who volunteer are clearly stupid or suicidal. Both disqualify them for participation.

"That's some catch."

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[mcgrew]

Wait a minute, that can't be right... I mean, Washington is from Venus.

What would you do before you died on Mars?

[madhatter256]

If you're in Mars doing a one-way mission with no hopes of returning. What would you do before you died?

I'd make an effort to fuck with people's minds in the future.

I would make an elaborate treasure map of ancient alien civilizations in areas that are suitable for future human settlements. That way when people find my map and realize a government building is built on a location that apparently has ancient alien bones, treasure, etc., they think it was a government conspiracy or cover up and madness will ensue (but I'll be laughing from the heavans).

I would look for a cave and set up fake cave paintings like Prometheus pointing towards the Sun. That way they may send some poor sap to go explore the sun for possible clues (and possibly make great discoveries along the way) but in the end a lot of people will die because the Sun is really dangerous.

And the day I will fall to near death I will walk as far as I can, fall flat on my face, break my protective suit and have my right arm point in some arbitrary direction, so when rigormortous kicks in, my arm stays in that position. That way people will wonder what the hell I was pointing at.

I guess I want to be an asshole astronaut lol.

Re:What would you do before you died on Mars?

[ledow]

Walk backwards for several miles from a crack in the rock. Some future explorer will follow that trail and think I disappeared.

Leave any colony in a state like the LV-426 colony, just for the laughs. A little-known, ugly-looking, smuggled Earth creature stuck in a specimen jar for bonus points.

Sketch out a Turing machine calculating flight trajectories in the dust on the ground, just for the hell of it.

Hunt down the Mars Rovers and turn them into Roomba's. Bonus points for making it look like Wall-E.

Write "Beware of the...." in the sand before I die.

Re:What would you do before you died on Mars?

[Krneki]

Create a script to post random stuff on Facebook/tweet/email ad infinitum.

Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[concealment]

We keep hearing about how banks, firms, etc. that were "too big to fail" have ...failed.

Then we hear about how humanity is now global and the future is bright. Are we too big to fail, and thus prone to failure?

The interest in Mars seems less about exploration and more about looking for another planet to inhabit. Taken as a whole, this one may be about done, or rather, the human civilizations on it appear to be teetering over the precipice of internal disaster.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[Floyd-ATC]

I think it was the other way around. Our ancestors messed up Mars and then some of them managed to escape to Earth.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Calling banks "Too big to fail" doesn't mean that they can't fail, it means that we cannot afford to let them fail, hence the massive bailouts. Humanity as a whole is of course similarly too big to fail.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[Patch86]

"Too big to fail" means so big that when a failure happens (which would have happened anyway), the powers that be need to step in and fix it rather than let it fail as the consequences would be too terrible for everyone else. It does not mean "so big that it'll never fail", nor "so big that it'll inevitably fail".

If humanity is "too big to fail"- who would step in to stop us failing?

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[thetoadwarrior]

Mars isn't a good final solution but the sun will burn out eventually and we'll almost certainly die so might as well start as early as possible to find a way off.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[bzipitidoo]

Mars could be a hedge against disaster. But maybe not a very good one. There's really no reason why a nuclear war on Earth couldn't reach Mars as well. And humanity on Mars would no doubt be far more fragile. The harder problem is not moving ourselves there, it's establishing our environment. Likely there would be millions of species we could never establish on Mars in any kind of "natural" self sustaining fashion. If we brought them to Mars at all, they'd have to stay in greenhouses and zoos. Not that we'd be much better off ourselves on that point.

What would it take to get Mars to the point where we could reestablish life on Earth should it be wiped out by some terrible accident such as a massive meteor strike? We don't yet know our own world or ourselves well enough. Biosphere 2 showed that among other things. Or, suppose Earth was not just killed but also rendered uninhabitable for millennia, as could happen if lots of radioactive material were dumped on it? Could a Martian colony survive without Earth?

We really cannot count on Mars to save us in case we recklessly spoil the Earth.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[Livius]

"Too big to fail" was a lie. You know because a politician was talking at the time.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[Livius]

It means someone wants you to *believe* that we cannot afford to let them fail. It might or might not actually be the case.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[ultranova]

Mars could be a hedge against disaster. But maybe not a very good one. There's really no reason why a nuclear war on Earth couldn't reach Mars as well. And humanity on Mars would no doubt be far more fragile. The harder problem is not moving ourselves there, it's establishing our environment. Likely there would be millions of species we could never establish on Mars in any kind of "natural" self sustaining fashion. If we brought them to Mars at all, they'd have to stay in greenhouses and zoos. Not that we'd be much better off ourselves on that point.

All of which rises a question: why anchor those zoos on Mars? Build huge space stations, make them mobile with solar sails, and let them roam the Solar System. You get asteroid mining, you get solar collectors, you get comfortable in-system transportation, you get high chances of at least some of them being outside nuke range should a war break out - and if you build a colony from hollowed-out asteroid, it could well shrug off a direct hit from a nuke. And of course such a colony would be in a perfect position for research and later interstellar exploration.

Why chain yourself to a planet when that planet offers very little benefit?

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[KeensMustard]

How long do you think we can afford to wait?

Honestly?

Forever.

At least for the foreseeable future. In the far future, humanity will die out, and there isn't much point in trying to mitigate that risk, that is simply hubris. There is a separate (slight) risk that a huge rock will slam into the earth and wipe out humanity, but that is very unlikely, so it is well down the list. Our mitigation strategy for this risk is to (a) detect and divert the rock (b) Find a way to save as many humans as possible, which means an earthbound mitigation (deep tunnels, underground arks for plants and animals etc.). 7 billion people wiped out and 70 survivors on Mars is not a win scenario.

Meanwhile, our big risk, in terms of likelihood (certain) and consequence (moderate to severe) is anthropogenic climate change. It is so big, and so present in the human psyche that often as not, the attraction of Mars based theme parks and the like merely serve to divert our minds from the task at hand.

Good risk management means starting at the top and working down. Procrastination and dwelling on the largely irrelevant lead to failure. Let's knuckle down and get on with it.

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[kenorland]

We keep hearing about how banks, firms, etc. that were "too big to fail" have ...failed.

You misinterpreted that. People weren't saying that these banks "couldn't" fail, they were saying that they "shouldn't" because they were so big that if they failed, a lot of people would actually have to face the consequences of their stupid decisions. "Too big to fail" was mostly an excuse for Bush and Obama to shove vast amounts of tax dollars into the greedy hands of bank managers.

The interest in Mars seems less about exploration and more about looking for another planet to inhabit. Taken as a whole, this one may be about done, or rather, the human civilizations on it appear to be teetering over the precipice of internal disaster.

Humanity is doing better than ever before in its history, no teetering and no looming disaster. Even the naysayers and Luddites are actually going down in numbers (much to the chagrin of religious nuts of both the Christian and the global warming persuasion).

Re:Is humanity "too big to fail"?

[VortexCortex]

The interest in Mars seems less about exploration and more about looking for another planet to inhabit.

I disagree. We're not abandoning Earth out of desperation. Besides, we would be morons to NOT get some of our eggs out of this one basket, else we're all doomed by the next big space rock. We don't have to be doomed, we could push some asteroids into orbit around the Moon, mine them in the meanwhile until something big comes along, we can send them at the earth killer like a slingshot to deflect it like billiard balls, or tug it via gravity. We can save Earth from certain Doom! ...But only if we get to Space! It's going to take a lot more experience and trips to make such ventures economical, but we're talking the fate of the fucking species and even the whole planet, man! It doesn't matter how much it costs, it MUST be done.

Besides, the stars are practically crying out to us, "Come See!" The next planet over is easy to land on, no atmosphere, no magnetic shielding, and has water. For fuck's sake you couldn't ask for a better proving ground for learning how to survive self sustained away from Earth. All of the skills that go into a sustained Mars colony would be perfect for use in deep space sans planet. We've got a huge asteroid field just chock full of building material that's free from deep (expensive) gravity wells -- It's got a dwarf planet Ceres, 1/3rd the total mass of the asteroid belt, that's thought to be made of ice and rock, more valuable resources. We've got a near brown dwarf (Jupiter) to study gravity and what not without catching on fire by practicing in the Sun. We've got planets with moons full of water and methane (FUEL!).

No other race would be able to contain itself for so long! The stars have rolled out the red carpet, seemingly just for us, and you think we're just desperate to leap a sinking ship? It's our only hope to save the world and you think we have an option NOT to go to Mars? We're not teetering on the precipice of disaster, we're rip roaring ready to conquer the stars. There's just some outmoded economic models centering on petty short term personal greed that's driving pointless war efforts and holding us back. Despite the moronic economics and short sightedness the more mature among us are still dragging humanity to the stars, albeit kicking and screaming like a spoiled selfish brat.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness the last expedition of Scott was pretty stupid. Plus, the man seemed to be kind of douche.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[shking]

The Arrogant Worms have the perfect response to this http://youtu.be/iIT15HJMRqQ

Re:WATER?

[ledow]

In an air-tight environment, almost all of that water is excreted again at some point. Most as water vapour in your breath, some as urine, some as sweat, some in your faeces etc.

If you put a human in a hermetically-sealed box and gave them enough food and water for a week, that water would still be around in the box at the end. It's just a matter of collecting it.

Move forward to a non-hermetically sealed box and imperfect collection mechanisms and all you have to do it make up the difference. That's significantly less.

Your primary fuel will be hydrogen and oxygen. We actually think we can find most of that for a "return journey" by breaking down water found on the planet itself, it's so plentiful. Ignoring that, igniting said fuel (say, for warmth) produces pure water as the exhaust gas. Failing actually finding it on the planet, you can capture those gases from the air and make water by igniting hydrogen in oxygen. It's just a matter of time and electricity, both of which would (presumably) be plentiful on a mission to Mars.

Ignoring *that* - there is water ice on Mars. We know it. And in 20 years time, we'll know it even better. If there isn't, then taking along enough to make up the losses for several months/years at a time is a no-brainer. Hell, we got to the moon for several people without water shortages, any mission to Mars will scale up similarly.

Water really isn't a problem. Heat is your problem. Heating makes up a HUGE fraction of our energy usage even today, and Mars is colder (-143 to about 35 centigrade on the surface depending on latitude and time of day). So the hottest part of the hottest day on Mars is a warm summer's day, the coldest part of the coldest day is colder than the coldest recorded temperature ever on Earth.

So whatever way you look at it, the energy needed to keep you warm, and your surroundings warm, especially if you're going to build a colony to support life long-term, is through the roof compared to the difficulty of digging down or extracting water from the atmosphere with even the most inefficient tools.

..Suicide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Suicide? More like immortality.

The greatest privilege I can imagine is the chance to live out your years on a frontier, working your fingers to the bone every day to up the survival chances for everyone else. It would be a rough haul, that's for sure - but like bacteria, you'd dying to prepare the ground for later life.

Re:..Suicide?

[thereitis]

You live on a planet for awhile and die there. In this case it will be on Mars. I don't see why this is being dubbed a "suicide mission".

Re:..Suicide?

[thereitis]

FWIW, dictionary.com says the definition of suicide mission is: killing or injuring others while annihilating yourself; usually accomplished with a bomb

Re:..Suicide?

[jcdr]

Sound a bit different if you have a plan, even a risked one, for going back, compared than the assurance to have no possibility at all.

Re:..Suicide?

[KeensMustard]

Suicide? More like immortality.

Infamy is more likely. You don'y get to choose how future generations will regard a venture like this one.

The greatest privilege I can imagine is the chance to live out your years on a frontier, working your fingers to the bone every day to up the survival chances for everyone else.

Frontier mythology is terrific, but it is still myth - the reality of a frontier is completely different to the popular imagination.

Re:..Suicide?

[Xtifr]

Yeah, being born is a suicide mission. Unless they make some truly unexpected discoveries in medicine in the next few decades, not a one of us is getting out alive.

Unless this guarantees that they die prematurely (and I see no evidence of that), it's silly to call this a suicide mission. Sure, there's a lot of potential for failure, but that's called risk, not suicide. Heck, it's not even guaranteed that they can't get back. It's just not obvious yet how they might do so.

Re:..Suicide?

[ceoyoyo]

Because the astronauts are likely to die prematurely due to lack of things like food, air and water. The plan is to fund their supply missions with the proceeds from their 24/7 reality show. How many reality show stars do you know who kept bringing in large amounts of cash for more than a year? Ten years? Twenty? Now consider that to ensure supplies deliveries to Mars they'd also have to be the most successful reality stars ever, for that whole time.

Some things not thought of...

[liquidweaver]

Lets assume they establish a viable colony on Mars, which is so successful it outlives the parent company. Whose responsibility is it then? The Dutch government?
Will they have a virtual seat at the UN?
What about laws with clear legal language that specify the "earth". "globally", etc... will those laws apply to Mars?
If a martian worker wants to telework in the US, will they require a visa or some sort of space permit?

Re:Some things not thought of...

[wvmarle]

I don't think a private company will think about those matters. Well, maybe they do, for a short moment, and then say "that's for the politicians to figure out, not our problem".

Such a colony on Mars, especially small ones, will anyway be a perfect anarchy/communist type of organisation. They're too small to have anything that resembles a government.

Re:Some things not thought of...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Or in the case of a private company setting up a colony, there will be a government in the form of a ruthless, heartless administrator squeezing the locals for extra pennies of profit. Haven't you seen Total Recall (the good one), Outland, or read "The moon is a harsh mistress"? (I can recommend reading the latter). A private company going through the expense of setting up a colony cannot afford anarchy... unless of course their profit model is running a reality show based on what happens in the colony, in which case death, drama and lawlessness will make for some excellent television.

Re:Some things not thought of...

[wvmarle]

There is no money to be made inside the colony. And that because there is no money there, except for the loose change that the colonists brought with them. The money they make is on earth: publicity, interviews, biographies, etc.

Where do you think money could come from? Trade with Earth? Not as long as it's a one-way trip. These colonists are on their own, completely isolated supplies wise, they must be fully self-sufficient. And economical - that is, whatever economy they can set up there, which in the beginning will not be much. In that regard they're going to be quite close to isolated tribes living deep in the Amazon jungle.

Re:Some things not thought of...

[Hans Adler]

See http://mars-one.com/en/about-mars-one/advisers

"On what conditions would states allow a private company to send humans to another planet? What kind of requirements should a Mars settlement comply with in terms of planetary protection? What legal regime will govern life on another planet? Until now, these questions used to sound very 'far off', but if Mars One lives up to its promise, space lawyers have work to do, and I am excited to be a part of that!"

Tanja Masson-Zwaan, Deputy Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University

Re:Some things not thought of...

[ultranova]

Such a colony on Mars, especially small ones, will anyway be a perfect anarchy/communist type of organisation. They're too small to have anything that resembles a government.

We already have isolated and technology-dependent societies like that. Ships at sea, for example. Simply think of a Mars colony as a nuclear submarine with no way out, and you're not far off.

Re:Some things not thought of...

[toebob]

They're not isolates supplies wise. The idea is that the parent company will send more supplies in future trips. The colonists produce data about Mars that is valuable and in return they get support from interested parties on Earth. Of course, the mere survival of the colonists is valuable and worthy of a certain amount of supplies, too.

Re:Some things not thought of...

[Xtifr]

All things we should be thinking about. If this forces the issue, then great! :)

Re:Some things not thought of...

[wvmarle]

OK, fair enough, yet it remains one-way traffic. And stuff like food they still need to produce themselves. That may be the biggest challenge, as I doubt earth-based plants will do well on Mars, with the little sunshine lack of nutrients in the soil. Sure it can all be solved, but it's really hard if you're on a budget both energy and material supplies wise.

Re:Some things not thought of...

[ceoyoyo]

A better question is who's going to feed them when the parent company decides it can't afford supply launches anymore.

Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[mozumder]

It's a suicide mission if the intent is to kill them. It's a one-way trip if the intent is to live there.

Re:A Few Minor Problems To Be Solved ....

[ProppaT]

You did read the part where they said it was a suicide mission, right?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Overzeetop]

22?

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[Overzeetop]

Intent is all a matter of perspective. If it were a one way trip to the Sun, or even the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, it would still be a suicide mission.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dinfinity]

Big difference:
They either had no idea of what they would find (explorers), or knew exactly that great rewards could await them.

Pretty much the only interesting things about Mars are some geological history and potentially a biological history. I'm not saying it isn't cool or valuable to go there, just that it's not that interesting.

Other point: we would know a lot about the South Pole if no one had ever gone there in a stupid suicidal way.

Ridiculous Title

[machinelou]

Newsflash: Rest of Earth's population chooses 'suicide' mission at home.

Not really

[EzInKy]

There are many of who have had children and even grandchildren by now. We've contributed to the gene pool as much as we can. What else do we have left other than to look forward to death by one means or another? Wouldn't it be better to go in a project that might advance humanity than sit around wasting its resources?

Re:Not really

[rubycodez]

most of us are self motivated to train and be trained to operate extremely complicated system, as we already do it for a living

maybe you would have no such abilities....

Re:Not really

[BonzaiThePenguin]

There's more to life than having kids, wasting resources, and traveling to Mars. Maybe they could try community service or something.

Re:Not really

[EzInKy]

I'm pretty sure that suffecient data has been obtained about eating bullets or sleeping pills to reach conclusions. How much data exists about dying in space? How much about dying on Mars? Why are you so against advancing science?

Re:Not really

[EzInKy]

True, there is. But not many remember those who dish up soup for the poor.

Re:Not really

[BonzaiThePenguin]

I was thinking more along the lines of repairing houses or helping keep kids away from gangs (why do people always think soup?), but there is this one guy who finished contributing to the gene pool, worked in community service, and will be remembered because he leveraged that experience to become President.

Sounds like that road has better odds and less work, and you don't even have to die!

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

Excel spreadsheets!? (Riotous laughter)

I am a CAD draftsman and an NC programmer, jacknut.

I presume that a serious colonization effort will require engineers and fabrication programmers, no? Shit breaks, and you gotta make new parts. Not to mention designing and building new habitat structures.

It seems reasonable to believe that a COLONY expedition could use such a person.

Re:Not really

[LordOfTheNoobs]

Who cares if the first 10 groups die off? Mankind should expand to multiple planets. Systems, Galaxies and Clusters, too. But planets is a good start. We'll need to bring a fabrication chain online to have any chance of survival on other planets. Flying out spare parts from Earth isn't a reasonable option.

What else do we have to do? People will sit around on Earth squabbling over it's control and resources whether or not we send out colonies to squabble over control and resources on other planets as well.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

[Useless in space]

Tell that to apollo 13 astronauts. The ones who had to shove a square peg into a round hole to have breathable air. Shit happens. Having an engineer on board the mission is vital, especially one who can make creative fixes. It takes 6 months at least to get a shipment from the earth to mars. A colony simply can't wait that long, nor could apollo 13 wait for mission control to shoot up a replacement co2 scrubber. They were damned lucky they were in close orbit of earth, and had near realtime communication with ground team engineers. Otherwise they would have died up there.

Mars has several MINUTES of com latency with earth. Calling tech support on earth is NOT a viable option, wiseass.

Your whole argument can be lampooned like this:

"You are a blacksmith, and your anvil and hammer take up too much room in the cargo hold, and take up weight that can be used for food! We don't need you in the new word, we can send ships back to england to get all our horses shoed, get nails, and fix our plows!"

In short, you are an idiot, and don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

Also, just so you know, turning out a screw on an NC lathe takes all of about 5 minutes.

Unlike the fantasy world you live in, I actually work in a production environment. I know what you will need to have a successful colony startup.

You approach it from the standpoint that it will always fail. That is why you do not see the value in someone like me going. (You are a selfish whore, who wants me to stay here and design pretty toys for YOU to consume, here on earth instead.) Newsflash. I don't want to work for you.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

It must be sublime, lieing to yourself that you know everything every day.

A mars colony would have to establish on the ground manufacuturing almost immediately. It would need it for the raw materials you speak of, like oh... oxygen and water.

The martian soil is heavily loaded with iron oxide. That is why it is fucking called "the red planet." Processing the soil would be necessary to do pretty much *anything* with it, given that it is contaminated with perchlorates, and other salts that render it unsuitable for agriculture, even inside a habitat.

How's this for you:

You collect the dirt along with dry ice and frozen water ice from the subsoil. It is contaminated with perchlorates. You bring the dirty ice to the colony site, and process it this way:

1) heat it to 500F, to liberate all the water and chemically bound oxygen. Run this through a gas fractioning system. This gives you pure CO2, O2, and water. How you heat it is not important. Big assed mirrors would work if you can keep the dust off. Most likely a small fission powerplant would be used though, and the heat would be pumped into the living quarters to keep it habitable.

2) return some of the sequestered water to the soil sample to dissolve the salts present. Extract the saline water, and distill it. This gives you calcium, sodium, potassium and other alkali earth chlorine and sulfate salts, and reclaims the water again.

3) vibration segregate the soil. This seperates metalic ores from less useful silicates.

4) use the silicates to manufacture glass for solar collection, mirrors, fiberoptic cable, and fiberglass insulation. What isn't useful for glass, is used as subsoil in agricultural habitats.

5) chemically isolate the salts from process 2. Process them into essential inorganic strong acids needed for any useful petrochemical operation. (Phosphoric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and pals.) Treat the metal oxides with strong acid cocktails, to get transition metal salts. These have uses in everything from agricultural fertilizers, to feedstock for metal refinement. The high CO2 atmosphere of mars would make it very useful for producing concentrated cabolic acid to fascilitate these conversions.

6) mars has depleted its atmospheric free O2 reserve almost completely. Subsoil iron, copper, tin, and other valuable structural metal ores *will* be present. Clearing the surface soil for the perchlorates and other raw materials will expose bedrock where these minerals are found. This is what you refine into feedstock for additional fabrication systems and habitats.

So, things the marsian colony will need include:

A nuclear fission plant
A gas fractioning system
An industrial electric kiln + glass furnace
An industrial induction heater and metal foundry crucibles
An industrial wet chemistry complex
Human habitat structures (includes water treatment and all that)
Heavy earth movers and mining equipment
A dedicated machine shop to maintain the earth movers and mining equipment
Agricultural habitats
Recreational structures

The NC machining systems would be inside the machine shop, and would be mission critical equipment.

What you seem to fail at understanding, is that simply because the air outside is lethal, that does not mean local material harvesting is impossible, or undesirable.

As for being an idiot, all you have to do is read the primers for this mission to know that using native materials is EXACTLY the proposed mission for this colony mission.

That means they will NEED people like me.

That you don't like that fact, or think the mission is doomed to failure doesn't ammount to shit. It just means you shouldn't go.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

Also, your insistance that mars has "zero or low gravity" betrays your insane ignorance.

The 6 month trip to mars is just that. The trip there. The colony is not an orbital one. It is to go on the martian surface.

Mars has metal ore deposits. That is where said blacksmith gets raw materials.

The colony needs to extract mineral oxygen to suppliment its supply, and that is already a fair portion of the refinery aparatus for metals right there, if efficiently designed. YOU GET METALS BY REFINING MINERALS FOR AIR, fucking idiot. It is a fucking biproduct!

Mars has a surface gravity of .38G. NC machines are built "heavy" to supress vibrations, not because they need to weigh 20 tons. Being 1/3 earth weight does not reduce their inertial properties. A 20 ton NC machine takes just as much energy to push on earth as it does on mars. It only makes it easier for a crane to move it into the machine shop as the shop is being built. Most NC fabrication tooling mechanically holds the stock material with vices and fixtures. Gravity is unimportant to any of that. Gravity only comes into play in removing chips from the workpiece, and controlling coolant. Mars DOES have gravity. Chips will fall away, and coolant will flood just fine.

Gasses produced by NC mills are not that dangerous. Mostly water vapor, and volatized lubricating oil. Also, NC machines can be designed to use compressed CO2 as coolant. There is a copious supply outside. It can be safely vented right back outside. CO2 coolant is especially commonplace for aluminum and magnesium milling.

Clearly, I know *a lot* more about this than you do. Insisting I have no idea what I am talking about after I have consistently poked holes in your arguments like this does not improve your position.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

Newsflash.

This is a NON PROFIT venture, funded by CONTRIBUTIONS.

Know what that means dickweed? It means it doesn't cost YOU a dime, unless you donate!

Complain about paying for it some more, asshole.

As for living in a tincan with 15 other people? I really wouldn't mind. Seriously. I am ambivalent about human company. They could be stark, egregious exhibitionists that fuck goats right next to me and I wouldn't care.

Also, my disdain for YOU does not mean I hae disdain for all people in general like that.

Re:Not really

[cusco]

You don't have much imagination, then.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

*shakes head*

You are not worth my time AC.

It is quite aparent you have never worked a day in your life doing any of those things. (Amusingly, they are things I have done.)

But to educate you further, coolant in an NC machine is pressurized. It sprays in jets to blast the chips away. You could operate one in ZERO gravity, as long as you also had a wet vac running in the machine envelope. (This is a commonly added option even! How do you think vacuum table fixtures work?) The tradjectories of the chips is moot. The envelope is closed, and coolant and chips spray all over inside even in earth gravity. The machines are designed to deal with that just like they are designed to deal with humidity and oil vapors.

But of course, imagine a totally fucked up and ramshackle operation with everyone sleeping on cots in the machine shop, with a unified pressurized habitat, because that would be such epic fail, it would fit perfectly with your internal monologue.

You have consistently resorted to personal attacks on my inteligence, made faulty assumptions about my work history and mental health, and have all around refused to admit any of the glaring faults in your arguments despite repeated attention being drawn to them.

But of course, because I misspell a word or two, I must be an illiterate yokel wo can't even tie his own shoes. Because, you know, actually evaluating that glaring nonsequitor would contradict your world view.

Go complain to somebody else, and be a sour, bitter, shriveled husk of a human being someplace else. I am sure there is no shortage of things you can go complain futilely and impotently about that don't concern you in any fashion about, like you did here.

Seriously. You complained about having to spend money on a non profit, contributions funded mars mission that won't cost you a dime, did so shamelessly, and attacked me and every other reader of slashdot with a shameless stereotype that does not represent reality in any fashion.

I will still apply on their roster, regardlesss of your misguided and erroneous points of view. Your argumentative and needlessly negative and acid candor have in no way discouraged the decision, and in fact, only demonstrated why people who CAN do things should sign up for this mission, and try to make a difference someplace else, away from frighted, sour, and small little people like yourself.

Good day sir. Enjoy your self-imposed misery.

Re:Not really

[wierd_w]

If I am not selected, it won't hurt my feelings at all.

But I will certainly never go, if I don't apply, now will I?

As for speaking math, I speak it just fine. You are just suffering from extreme crainial rectumitus due to approaching a difficult problem from a preconceived point of view. (Hint: you can't be objective, if you have already judged.)

Good day sir.

But there are way more than 80000 lawyers on Earth

[Overzeetop]

What the hell are we going to do with the rest of them?

All or nothing

[petes_PoV]

Either there should be no lawyers among the 80,000 or they should ALL be. One group stands a chance of establishing a utopian society, the other would, at least, be doing all us earthlings a huge favour.

Re:All or nothing

[wvmarle]

As long as they do not send out all the phone sanitisers, or we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Re:WATER?

[Tarlus]

Stillsuits.

Re:But there are way more than 80000 lawyers on Ea

[Anonymous Coward]

Colonize the Sun?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[alen]

there was protein rich food in the grass, carcasses

there is no food on Mars

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Evtim]

And those who do not want to volunteer are the most stable and responsible citizens - clearly ideal candidates for such an important mission.

captcha: Catch 22

Geek Heaven

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Think of it as a sort of geek heaven where the probability of reaching nirvana is > 0.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[loneDreamer]

Sorry, I was about to mod you Funny, but hit overrated instead. Commenting to undo.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[allcoolnameswheretak]

I was wondering about the same thing. But maybe some people are just incredibly ambitious (in the sense of acquiring honor & fame) to be genuinely OK with sacrificing their lives without otherwise being bonkers.

In 1492, some people would have called Columbus' voyage a suicide mission, yet obviously enough people could be found to man three ships.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Rhacman]

Great, now all I can think about is all the fun monkeys have up in the trees and that dolphins have frolicking in the ocean!

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[rubycodez]

a one-way mission is not a suicide mission, resupply is a much easier and less resource intensive operation. You are merely judging more adventurous people, those with a pioneering spirit, by your very sheltered and coddled lifestyle.

Just a publicity stunt

[Wdi]

They are now starting the astronaut selection program for a trip in 10 years, but there is no indication whatever that they are concerned about the much more fundamental task of designing a transport ship?!?! Really, really suspicious. What are the prospects supposed to train on/for ?

"People in thirty seven countries have purchased our merchandise, demonstrating their support for Mars One"

OK, I understand. Presumably the foundation managers are well paid. That is no problem even for a non-profit.

Re:Just a publicity stunt

[CanHasDIY]

They are now starting the astronaut selection program for a trip in 10 years, but there is no indication whatever that they are concerned about the much more fundamental task of designing a transport ship?!?! Really, really suspicious. What are the prospects supposed to train on/for ?

"People in thirty seven countries have purchased our merchandise, demonstrating their support for Mars One"

OK, I understand. Presumably the foundation managers are well paid. That is no problem even for a non-profit.

Best "against" comment, by a long shot.

Most rational, too.

Re:Just a publicity stunt

[Monty845]

That isn't even the biggest issue for me. There are several key challenges a real attempt would face, and little to nothing is said about them. 1. Money - Not even considering design, construction or training, and even presuming future price reductions in orbital launch, the launch costs would run north of $100M, and likely much more. Yet almost nothing is said of how that or anything else would be funded 2. Radiation - Both during the trip to Mars, and while on the surface, the crew would be exposed to solar and cosmic radiation, while to some extent increased exposure is just one of the risks, without any mitigation, the crew could be exposed to lethal doses just on the trip there. 3. Landing - Nothing is said of the difficulties of landing on mars. The concept art has heat shields like you would expect of an earth landing module, but nothing is said about dealing with the martian atmosphere. There are of course plenty of other challenges, but that those huge ones are totally unaddressed, and instead they are moving ahead with crew selection, seems very suspect. They are putting the thing they can certainly achieve first, selecting a crew, to distract from the things they may not be able to deal with.

Re:Just a publicity stunt

[Hans Adler]

Yes, there are some suspicious elements. It may be part of a big push to get funding for NASA to do a manned Mars mission. And to encourage the Chinese to continue pursuing their plans. I would consider that a good thing.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be reasonable for them to design a transport ship on their own anyway. Apparently they are going to cooperate with DragonX, who apparently said in principle the technology is already there.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[msauve]

Martha is from Venus. George is from Mars. There's a book about it.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to go and I'm not stupid or suicidal. To the contrary, I just want to get away from 7 billion people that are just like you.

Loyalty

[Sockatume]

Yeah, it's a suicide mission on paper, but if you spend half of the mission time going around solving their personal problems and buying stuff to upgrade the space ship, then everyone gets out OK.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Sarten-X]

They could just be realistic about their own future on Earth.

Everybody dies sometime. If someone is willing to sever (or strain) their ties to Earth for the chance to advance mankind, why should that choice be suspect?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

Suicide is rarely malicious. A suicidal mind is usually either concerned with escaping its own problems, or preventing further harm to others. To leave Earth accomplishes both objectives, with the added bonus of contributing to human knowledge. For someone with no cherished ties to their present life, why do you suspect a mental defect or deficiency when they choose to explore the harsh frontier of another world over spending their days shuffling papers in an office?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dpilot]

I find it odd/annoying that they call this a "suicide" mission rather than a "colonization" mission. The real essence here is that it's a one-way trip. I haven't seen anything to suggest that they're abandoning the colonists, or sending them to any more certain a death than we'd all see here on Earth.

There is one problem with calling it "colonization", in that we're generally thinking of post-reproductive-age people, and at some point any viable colony is going to need kids for its future. But given the assumption of a second wave, sending older people on the first wave probably is a good idea. Get the basics nailed down before worrying about kids.

Or have I got this all wrong, and made assumptions myself? Are they planning on sending people on a one-way, fixed-duration mission, and there is no surviving past that duration?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you're taking in the subsidiary benefits of such a venture: the technologies needed to advance the primary goal must themselves be developed. Providing the motivating force to propel our species forward into occupying other planets is incredibly interesting.

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[rubycodez]

resupply would be very easy compared to sending humans in the first place, no practical limit on acceleration and no radiation shielding concerns. Water will be recycled, so only need to replenish that which was lost in cycling. A person needs less than 1.5 kg of food per day, so a ton of preserved (sealed and gamma sterilized) food will feed a person for over three and a half years. we could be talking the need to send resupply every 5 years.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Runaway1956]

I have traveled literally millions of miles in my lifetime, just to see what lay over the horizon, as often as not. I was fortunate enough that other people paid for my traveling, so I was able to earn a living. But, the travel is what it has all been about.

So - tell me again about stupidity and suicide, please?

At age 56, and with bad knees, moving my carcass to a planet with lower gravity would be a nice thing. Throw in the new horizons, and it's a complete win-win situation for me. Suicide? Driving to work is a suicidal stunt, in and of itself, for most Americans.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[gweihir]

You are confusing evolutionary mechanisms with individual informed decisions. Pretty stupid. Did you volunteer?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[queazocotal]

As some context on supplies.
Completely open loop - no recycling - is 4.5Kg/day.
If you recycle the dehumidifier water and urine, that comes down to 1.6kg/day.

It's plausible to get it down to about a kilo a day, without having to do really hard things - close the carbon/nitrogen loops.
This means ten tons gets you 30 years of food.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Immerman]

Some people find the geological and potential biological history of Mars intensely interesting. Not to mention the potential biological *present* of Mars - if it ever had life then some/most of it is probably still there, just not on the surface (it's estimated that the vast majority, possibly high 90s%, of Earth life is subterranean microbes) Just because *you* don't think it competes with the next episode of Desperate Housewives isn't any sort of claim as to how inherently interesting it is. We've only begun to scratch the surface of the science to be done on Mars, and everything we've done to date could have been done in a week or two by a research team that was there in person.

Then there's the thrill of being part of Man's first serious offworld expedition and breaking ground for the first offworld colony. Many would say that's worth probably never setting foot on Earth again, and as for the risks of living in a hostile environment, there's plenty of people who risk their lives on a regular basis working hazardous jobs and playing extreme sports. Not really that much of a difference here, except that you're risking your life for a far more magnificent cause and will likely make it into the history books.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[jbmartin6]

Very Euro-centric. You forget Life Science specialist Ahmed Apoopie

black.

[leuk_he]

White object radiate less enery but also absorb less. Black objects radiate more energy, but also absorb more. As pointed out it mainly is cold there, you you want to keep your energy instead of absorbing it.

The solutions:
-Solar power. No clouds on mars.
-nuclear power densest energy you can carry.
-really long extension cord.

Re:black.

[khallow]

White object radiate less enery but also absorb less. Black objects radiate more energy, but also absorb more.

No, for a given surface temperature, they radiate the same.

Re:black.

[ThePeices]

White object radiate less enery but also absorb less. Black objects radiate more energy, but also absorb more.

No, for a given surface temperature, they radiate the same.

Then why does a hot black object, at the same temperate as a hot white object, cool down significantly faster if they are both radiating the same amount of energy?

Re:black.

[khallow]

Then why does a hot black object, at the same temperate as a hot white object, cool down significantly faster

Note I said surface temperature. It is possible for paints to insulate to different degrees the underlying object in which case the surface temperatures will be different and hence the amounts radiated will be different. That will account for the difference in cooling.

As to your remark, it can go the other way, if the white painted object is more transparent to infra red frequency EM than the black paint (in those frequencies, their roles might be reversed with the white in visible light paint being black in IR and vice versa).

Don't talk crap

[Viol8]

"That would contaminate the soil forever."

It would contaminate nothing. The body's water would freeze dry within hours and the UV radiation and near vacuum would make sure any organics soon decomposed or evaporated and the ice itself would sublime eventually. All you'd be left with after a few years would be minerals from the bones and teeth.

Re:Don't talk crap

[SilentStaid]

All you'd be left with after a few years would be minerals from the bones and teeth.

In other words... contamination?

Re:Don't talk crap

[Viol8]

What do you think all the dead space probes already on the surface are? Besides which , if humanity is to be a permanent presence on mars which is the whole premise behind the mission then "contamination" is inevitable.

Re:Don't talk crap

[SilentStaid]

I wouldn't dispute that contamination is inevitable. I was simply being snarky on the internet and pointing out that you started with "it would contaminate nothing." and then proceded to inform everyone of the ways that it would contaminate the soil, atmosphere and minerals not one full thought later.

Re:Don't talk crap

[SuperKendall]

I wouldn't dispute that contamination is inevitable. I was simply being snarky on the internet

Well that's always a great plan.

Re:Don't talk crap

[sourcerror]

It means it wouldn't kill life already present on Mars. Nobody cares about small scale physical contamination. Biological contamination is a more serious issue.

Re:Don't talk crap

[Sperbels]

Biological contamination is a more serious issue.

Why? Unless we development some sort of the fast than light travel or become extinct, the planet is going to be terraformed eventually. In all likelihood, the planet will kill off everything anyway. If a few survive, they certainly won't flourish.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[ddd0004]

Guess the entry requirements were too hard on Mike Hawk.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Gilmoure]

...interesting

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[bluefoxlucid]

We've already specified they are going to die.

I signed up for Mars Two

[sizzzzlerz]

Or, as we like to call it, the B ark. Funny how most of the enlistees are telephone sanitizers, hair dressers, and public relations people.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

[Weaselmancer]

After you die, there should be a mechanism in the spacecraft to expose you directly and slowly to the vacuum of space. You should be frozen and preserved as best as you can be. Then the ship should gently deposit you on the surface of Mars as intact as you could possibly be. Why?

What if there is an event on Earth like the flame deluge from A Canticle for Leibowitz? A nuclear event where 99% of the world is destroyed and thousands of years later we rediscover science?

Just imagine how surprised they will be to find a human skull on Mars.

Re:A Canticle for Leibowitz

[CanHasDIY]

After you die, there should be a mechanism in the spacecraft to expose you directly and slowly to the vacuum of space. You should be frozen and preserved as best as you can be. Then the ship should gently deposit you on the surface of Mars as intact as you could possibly be. Why?

What if there is an event on Earth like the flame deluge from A Canticle for Leibowitz? A nuclear event where 99% of the world is destroyed and thousands of years later we rediscover science?

Just imagine how surprised they will be to find a human skull on Mars.

OOH, and make sure they position the first body in the "Han Solo frozen in carbonite" pose prior to freezing!

Nothing like a thousand year old inside joke!

Re:A Canticle for Leibowitz

[tj2]

+1 for referencing A Canticle for Leibowitz. Brilliant, dark post-apocalyptic novel. Like Harper Lee, Miller seems to have had just that one novel (discounting a couple of shorter stories), but it's a great one.

Re:A Canticle for Leibowitz

[Darinbob]

I'd rather carve a secret message on the surface of the moon that is visibly by telescope, advertising Ovaltine.

Re:A Canticle for Leibowitz

[CanHasDIY]

Or the delicious chocolatey taste of Charleston Chew!

Sometimes I like to speculate that some of history's greatest mysteries are actually centuries-old inside jokes. Like, Socrates is in the afterlife, laughing his ass off as he explains to Atilla the Hun that the Antikythera Mechanism is actually just a really sophisticated, mechanical fart app.

Re:A Canticle for Leibowitz

[AK Marc]

CHA

send a lawyer

[leuk_he]

Great... we send a lawyer there too. that solves 2 problems at once.

Re:send a lawyer

[TuringCheck]

What about sending ALL of them? Dessicated and compacted so it can be done cheaply.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Read the linked older /. article: it's not really a suicide mission. It's one-way and high-risk (probably why they call it a suicide mission), but if all goes according to plan, these colonists will get to live out their natural lives, more or less (probably less due to a harsh environment and limited medical care). There will be regular followup missions with more colonists and equipment arriving. I don't know how realistic that plan is, but that's the plan.

With a decent connection

[binkzz]

I'd consider it if I had enough stuff to keep me occupied up there. At the least, a decent internet connection.

Although, it'd be kind of problematic trying to register on websites.

"Country: Eh.. United State of Mars?"
"Continent: Shit I don't know, should have paid better attention at the briefing."

What laws would I have to adhere to?

Could I legally pirate software?

And would it be illegal for people to download from my Mars server?

Would I be the king of Mars?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Viol8]

"Some people find the geological and potential biological history of Mars intensely interesting."

I doubt many of them find it interesting enough that the prospect of eternal exile and a lingering death will appeal to them.

"there's plenty of people who risk their lives on a regular basis working hazardous jobs and playing extreme sports."

Extreme sports are done by adrenaline junkies - effectively drug addicts. They're the last sort of people you want on a space mission. As for risky jobs , sure there are plenty , but generally they provide financial rewards and you generally get to go out with your family at the w/e - not just have to go back to some small module you're sharing with a load of maladjusted individuals.

"except that you're risking your life for a far more magnificent cause"

Well, thats your opinion. The Apollo astronauts knew they'd be home within 3 days if everything went ok. This is a whole different ball game.

Re:WATER?

[Alioth]

I don't think heat will be such a problem. While the temperature of the "air" on Mars near the surface may only reach a daytime high of about -20 deg F, the surface temperature gets much higher (70 deg F recorded max). A greenhouse type structure on Mars with a breathable atmosphere will get pretty toasty and warm. Open the roof to allow the sun to shine through the glass during the day, and close it at night to reduce the amount of heat radiating out at night.

Re:WATER?

[Issarlk]

Dude, didn't you see Dune ?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[smooth wombat]

So like Polo, Columbus, Magellan, Hillary, Wright, Gagarin, Armstrong and a whole host of other people who volunteered or took on the adventure of going somewhere where no one else had been.

Yeah, those are the last type of people we want to go to Mars. :eyeroll:

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[DaveAtFraud]

Those who volunteer are clearly stupid or suicidal. Both disqualify them for participation.

I have a solution to this dilema. I can think of several politicians, ex-coworkers and other people I know who I would gladly "volunteer" for such a mission.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:This will end in mutiny

[Issarlk]

They can't turn the ship around and go back. It's not star trek. They'd know that once they are on their way they have to go to mars before they can come back somehow.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[LVSlushdat]

If we wait for world governments to do a mission to Mars, we'll be waiting a VERY long time.. I've read Mars-One's plans and damn it if they don't sound like they have a VERY viable plan to get humans on Mars. Sure its a one-way trip, colonization usually is, and from the looks of their plans, the first few arrivals will be living pretty spartan lives, and there, obviously, is a good chance that they may die. But since the colonists are all volunteers, it is their right to take these kind of chances if they wish. The commenters who say "if you volunteer for this, you're stupid or insane, and thus should be disqualified" have no right to impose their standards on these potential volunteers. Frankly, I think this is a fantastic plan and IF it goes as planned, and, IF I'm still around in 2023, (62 now, 73 then) I plan to watch the tv shows "live" from Mars.. THOSE would make watching the first moon landing pale in comparison. For that, I was a 19 y/o kid, on a road trip with friends where we watched the "first steps" on a TV in a bowling alley in Ridgecrest Calfornia.

See our giant stadia!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I hope some agency shuts them down for not getting permission. Would serve the dying West right.

Also, a manned outpost doesn:t sound like a suicide mission per se. For years I've been saying launch a series of rockets and use robots to assemble a functioning habitat with years of food and renewable food and water. Only then send humans. The all eggs in one basket is the design of murderous idiots.

Practice by buildng and inhabiting same on the moon.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[gmuslera]

You will die anyway, sooner or later, so, why not doing it where no man has gone before, having an experience that noone else ever had in their lifetimes? Is not like most don't risk their lives (and actually die) for less glorious things, from climbing the Everest to crossing the street.

Do any of these propeller-heads know how nasty...

[Squidlips]

Mars is??? If you returned any of these colonists back to Earth and plunked them down in the worst place you could find such as a dry valley in Antarctica or the top of K2/Everest, they would think they were in paradise.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[cod3r_]

You sir, are hilarious. You win slash dot today.

Re:WATER?

[Immerman]

Even heating isn't that big of an issue - it's such a huge energy expense here because frankly we're extraordinarily wasteful. A well-designed passive-solar house will have negligible heating or cooling expenses over the course of a year. In a well-insulated habitat it takes very little energy to maintain a steady temperature, in fact you'll probably have to vent the excess heat created by yourself and your gadgets. And in the thin atmosphere of Mars you're basically living in a giant vacuum-insulated thermos.

It's not a one way trip anyway

[Radak]

I've supported this idea for years. It's so much easier to send a person with sufficient supplies to survive with a lot of hard work than it is to send a guy and return to Earth. And here's the kicker... It's not a one way trip anyway. Putting a human on Mars would generate so much interest in Mars exploration back home that I'm confident we'd have people there with return capability within 15 years.

For our first volunteers, it's a very long trip, but by no means does it have to be a suicide trip.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Johann Lau]

In fact, one of Man's greatest moments was called "stupid" at the time and ended up suicides. Or you wouldn't know *shit* about the South Pole now.

One of "man's greatest moments"? How so? That's some hilarious shit and I want to hear all the details.

Oh, and of course we would know about the south pole, it's not like it was "do the expedition THEN, in a suicidal way, or NEVER EVER!!!!".

In other news...

[hazem]

Nearl all but 1,000 humans volunteer for a suicide mission to remain on Earth.

Re:WATER?

[LaggedOnUser]

Clearly, once we accept the premise that it is in fact a suicide mission, it would be far more efficient to kill all the astronauts BEFORE launch and THEN shoot their dead bodies to Mars, leaving off all those unnecessary expenses for both heat and water...

Some probably didn't think it through

[thetoadwarrior]

Out of a 1000 I'm sure like 900 think they will get back. That said I bet if they really want to bring them back they could but the cost would be astronomical.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[CanHasDIY]

There's a big difference between crawling out of the ocean... you can always go back.

Yea, you do that, Chief.

Good luck on the whole "breathing" thing.

Are they accepting nominations?

[Peter Simpson]

I can think of several people who should go...

It's a pitch for a reality TV show

[Rogerborg]

This is entertainment, please treat it as such.

Having read Mary Roach's "Packing for Mars..."

[dpbsmith]

I highly recommend it. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach, really tells you everything you wanted to know about space travel but were afraid to ask. In fact it tells you things you never even thought to ask about. Like "What really does happen to clothing that is kept in contact with skin without being changed, for weeks?" Like "When they see a turd floating through the cabin, due to someone's carelessness, how do astronauts handle the situation?"

After reading that book, I asked myself the question, "Well, if you won a free all-expenses-paid monthlong trip to the International Space Station, would you accept?" And my honest answer is... I... am... not... sure.

So, my hat's off to those who volunteered, and I hope they have thought it through. Not just the suicide part, but what comes before. Because it sounds like being homeless and living in a car, only not as comfortable.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Rhacman]

Precisely!, and they are having all the more fun for it! Meanwhile we are sitting around boxed in cubicles thinking of ways we could create even more sophisticated boxes to sit in where you can't even leave if you want to!

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Immerman]

Obviously you've never spent time with dedicated scientists - I'm talking the "I've got a closet and comfortable sofa in my office and go home at least a couple times a week" sort. I assure you they do exist and are often very passionate, dynamic people. They just don't really care about the sorts of things most people care about.

As for a lingering death, that's one thing you're pretty much guaranteed not to have on Mars. On Earth yes, especially in the U.S. - you're almost guaranteed one here as you spend your last weeks/months/years in the clutches of a medical industry that's going to go to extraordinary lengths to force your failing body to survive just a little bit longer. On Mars you'll probably die within seconds or minutes, possibly with a few hours beforehand to know it's coming (i.e. if stranded without hope of rescue with X hours of air left). You *might* get terminally sick/injured and be temporarily kept alive in the "medical bay", but it won't linger nearly as long as it would here.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[UnknownSoldier]

/sarcasm Uh, right, because clearly _what_ planet you die on is an indicator of intelligence or psychology. Oh wait, it is not.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[interkin3tic]

Perhaps they're trying to set low expectations so that if it doesn't work out, no one is shocked. Saying "Colonize mars! Bring your kids!" and then having the vehicle crash would really discourage anyone from trying again. Saying "Suicide mission! Let's see what happens and just have fun!" and then everyone dies, well, no one can say that went much worse than planned.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[CastrTroy]

I think there's a difference between

you will travel to Mars and die as soon as your food, water, or air supply runs out, whichever comes first. Not only that, due to some spacecraft malfunction, you may not even make it out of earth's atmosphere. There is no chance of coming back, ever.

and

you will travel across the ocean, it's very dangerious, and you may never make it, but if you reach land on the other side, there's a good chance you could live another 20 or 30 years over there, or possibly even make a return trip and see your friends and family again, and you will be treated like a hero by all.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Beardo the Bearded]

I'm recovering from decompression sickness, you insensitive clod!

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[JigJag]

in this case living on the earth can be called a suicide mission too, since the only outcome is death.

I agree to the grandparent. It's not suicide if the goal is to establish permanent residence.

Re:A Few Minor Problems To Be Solved ....

[jones_supa]

The comments are so great that we don't even read the article titles anymore.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Beardo the Bearded]

You've got to die sometime.

You're going to die on Earth. At some point, someone is going to die in space or out on Mars or on the Moon or on some other planet.

But we're all going to die. Rather than die of old age with a perfectly preserved body, why not take the chance at a life on Mars? It might be short, it might be painful. It might take six months to get there. Hell, it took that long to get to the New World back in the 1600s. (Admittedly, there was air everywhere)

You might choke on a bagel tomorrow. A drunk driver might plow right into you on New Year's Eve.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[cellocgw]

Those who volunteer are clearly stupid or suicidal. Both disqualify them for participation.

Guess that makes them perfect candidates to play in the NFL.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[TwezerFace]

The dutch have flown on KLM...so this is an upgrade.

Re:WATER?

[Wraithlyn]

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/11/21/inspired-by-a-beetle-that-draws-water-from-the-air-scientist-creates-self-filling-water-bottle

Re:They're just going for the beads

[SomePgmr]

Nah, those were just illustrative dots where samples were taken!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/11/29/hoax_site_says_nasa_s_curiosity_rover_found_plastic_beads_on_mars.html

I don't know that we should be calling it a suicide mission though. It's a "return trip to earth in your lifetime is very unlikely" mission.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Beardo the Bearded]

I would go for the engineering challenge.

I would fully understand the risk... the certainty that I would never again see my home. I'd never go scuba diving again. I'd never watch the sunrise in a forest. Shit, I'd even miss going to the gym! I'd never see my kids (they're 6 and 8) or any of their kids ever again. I'd never be able to pop down to the store and pick up a McGuffin or widget or a burger.

I'd never get another FP on Slashdot.

But I'd be on Mars. We'd be living with the leading edge of human technology, all alone, with no supplies ever coming by. Yes, I would die on Mars. Maybe within hours of landing. I've got somewhere between 60 and 70 years left on Earth, max. I'd get less than that on Mars, almost certainly. What I've learned, and learned the hard way, is that how long you live isn't as important as how WELL you've lived. Did you push your life to the limits? Did you live up to your potential? What do you regret not doing? Do it. Tomorrow never comes.

Think of what the species would learn from a mission to Mars. That's well worth my life and gladly traded.

And I'd do it for free. Just give me the use of the company vehicle for a few months, then room and board afterwards.

Very cool

[smg5266]

Pretty neat idea, but isn't there some international regulations about contaminating other planets? I think it may be worthwhile to rigorously search for naturally occurring microbes carefully before we start sending actual people up there, with the inevitable contamination we bring.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Beardo the Bearded]

Which isn't much different from everyone ever, really.

We've all got to go sometime.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Johann Lau]

7 billion people that are just like you

Like what? You can't even say.

And even if you could, not even a doorknob would believe everybody but YOU is identical. Therefore...

I'm not stupid

Just how sure are you of this?

No need to mind

[SuperKendall]

as long as you don't mind seeing eternally-preserved bodies outside

Put a few benches outside near the bodies, then dress the bodies in suspenders and put gnome hats on 'em. Now you have an awesome rock garden outside.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dinfinity]

Some people find the geological and potential biological history of Mars intensely interesting. Not to mention the potential biological *present* of Mars - if it ever had life then some/most of it is probably still there, just not on the surface (it's estimated that the vast majority, possibly high 90s%, of Earth life is subterranean microbes) Just because *you* don't think it competes with the next episode of Desperate Housewives isn't any sort of claim as to how inherently interesting it is. We've only begun to scratch the surface of the science to be done on Mars, and everything we've done to date could have been done in a week or two by a research team that was there in person.

For the record, you're the one who mentioned Desperate Housewives. I previously had no knowledge of it even existing, but thank you for pointing out this valuable addition to Western culture.
More to the point, I'll repeat: it's just not that interesting, which is largely due to it being a big fucking desert. But feel free to enlighten me on what great discoveries we might expect.

Also, I'm betting that the money, effort and energy it would cost to establish your human research squad would yield almost equal results when establishing a non-human research squad with those resources. Probably more.
It's pretty unfair to compare the past pretty humble missions to a ridiculously more expensive hypothetical humans-on-mars mission.

In any case, I was arguing that we have done quite some research on Mars and have a lot more information on what benefits we could gain from going there. Which is nothing of economic interest and more importantly not 'absolutely nothing'. As opposed to the explorer and trader examples ledow mentioned.

How far slashdot has fallen

[whitroth]

A dozen years, I'd have been overwhelmed in my desire to go by all the other slashdotters asking where to sign up. These days, too many of the assholes who used to come out of alt.syntax.tactical....

                mark, probably too old to be accepted, dammit

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[Roman Coder]

You forgot Oliver Klovesauf.

Waste of time and money

[jklovanc]

Our mission will be one of extreme exploration. It will truly be the next giant leap for mankind.

They seem to be banking on the fact that investors will believe that people will watch the Mars launch and landings like they watch the Olympics. I doubt very much that a great part of the earth's population is interested in watching people wander around in space suits, play with rocks, consume food and resources and sleep. It is just a game of "Big Brother" on Mars. I know I will get bored in a couple of episodes.

By the way it is not "exploration". We are not discouvering new lands as they have been well documented from orbit. Almost everything a "colonist" can do can be done by a much less expensive rover.

It is not a "colony". A colony is a self sustaining entity and until they can manufacture everything they need on mars the settlement is not self sustaining; which leads to the next issue.

There is also a huge item missing from the list; resupply. Things break and can not be repaired so must be manufactured and replaced. This work must be done on earth and sent to Mars. That cost has not been factored into the equation. With a critical failure it is quite possible that everyone will die before the replacement parts arrive. If the failure is catastrophic enough, say a major explosion which destroys a few pods and leaves the rest exposed to the atmosphere, the whole settlement could be lost.

Lets wait till we have dealt with the issue on earth before we throw much needed cash into space. A Mars colony is not the solution to overcrowding on earth; we do not have the resources to get a significant number of people there and sustain them. At least wait till there is a viable means of profiting monetarily from the resources on Mars. Right now there is no way to get the resources back so they have no value.

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[jcdr]

Yes, but permanent residence is highly unlikely at this stage of the exploration.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[allcoolnameswheretak]

There's a difference, but remember that many people back then were still convinced the world was flat, especially among the common, uneducated folk where I assume most sailors came from.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Spottywot]

I take your point except, having read TFA there is nowhere that says 'Suicide mission'. Just the Slashdot headline. A suicide mission is one where premature and unnatural death is part of the objective. Here the objective is 'live as long as possible and establish a viable colony', quite the opposite of suicide really.

Re:As Fry said in Futurmama...

[jcdr]

Before you can say that, you must known what will be the causality of the death. End of air, of water, of food or of energy supply (to maintain a survivable temperature) are likely to be the highest probabilities if there is no incident. I would neither call neither of them a cool way to die.

Yes you can take drug to minimize pain, but you don't have to go to Mars to do that.

Not suicide when you flash the proper countersign

[WaffleMonster]

Remember to bring a copy of the human genome with you and Mars will be great fun. You'll meet aliens, get a history lesson on a display that makes imax look like betamax and take off for god knows where on a cool spaceship.

Just don't fuck up or you'll get sucked into the vortex of doom.

New Reality TV SHow?

[flogger]

Is this the next big reality TV show? In their faq, it is mentioned that a lot of the funding will be through a huge media spectacle.

This is what I need: watching a bunch of people who believe they are on mars; when they will just exist for our entertainment...Truman Show anyone?

poster children of don't look now

[epine]

1000 people brave enough to brag about putting their names on a non-binding list. News at 11.

How many would even make it up a naked gantry ladder to the Apollo crew cabin? Mount the podium with the list on top of the naked ladder. One side of the ladder for going up, the other side for going down. No cage. No occupancy limit. The total gantry height was a bit over 100m, so that's about the right height. Make it sturdy and relatively stiff to crossing breezes.

The naked sign-up ladder would be on roughly the height scale of Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ceoyoyo]

You are aware that when we "climbed down from the trees" we climbed back up right away right? Then over many generations we slowly spent more and more of our time on the ground? Ditto with walking out of the sea.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ceoyoyo]

You do have to be stupid to go live on another planet where your supplies of basic life supporting necessities are dependent on your ability to remain the greatest reality TV star ever. As soon as your ratings slip... you die. That is if you don't die of something unforeseen in the meantime (and thus get fantastic ratings for a short period).

I'm actually surprised they didn't get more volunteers.

If they include a dedicated WOW server or two....

[Dareth]

If they include a dedicated WOW server or two and list unlimited play time during the trip, they won't need any more volunteers.

The New World

[DarthVain]

I know it isn't quite the same thing, but I bet the first ship to send colonists at NA was a pretty dicey endevor as well.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[DarthVain]

I think I would be more concerned with air and water in that order (and shelter for that matter) before I am too worried about food. Otherwise it is just a neet way to chaperone 30 years worth or food to Mars. I would hazard that the transportation requirements for both of those things might exceed that of food. Unless they can figure out a reliable and effective way to produce in situ.

Re:Seriously

[dgatwood]

There's gravity on Mars. It's a little over a third of Earth norm. You would eventually lose your muscle tone, but not to the same degree or at the same rate that you would lose it in zero-g. Of course, the nine months getting there would be more problematic. (Yes, we could get people there faster, given enough fuel to slow down at the end, but it isn't clear whether we would bother.)

The moon?

[Jombieman]

Shouldn't we return to the moon in a significant way first? Maybe a harsher environment but would be a good way to test the tech. And since it is alot closer, resources could be sent if needed. It is like taking your children camping the first time. Best to spend a night in a tent in the back yard before going out to the wilderness.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ifdef]

Citation needed.

Any ocean sailor knows that the world is round. If it were flat, a ship going off into the distance would just get smaller and smaller, rather than the hull disappearing first and the tops of the masts disappearing last.

It is a myth that people of Columbus's time thought he would fall off the edge of the earth. Rather, the opposition was due to people saying "the distance is much farther than you think, and your crew will starve to death before you reach the Far East". In fact, they were right, and Columbus was just lucky that there was an unexpected continent in the way.

Flight to Heaven (or Hell)

[Med-trump]

Just consider it as a flight to heaven (or hell).

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[KeensMustard]

So - tell me again about stupidity and suicide, please?

You want a Mars colony, and want to be there. I want blackberries and ice cream. Which is okay - if I buy the blackberries and ice cream myself. If I carefully handwave over the fact that other people have to pay for my fulfilling a selfish desire, then that is stupid. Proclaiming that others should buy me blackberries and ice cream because "it's humanities destiny!" is stupid. We don't have a destiny.

I'm a fair bit younger than you, but I've already begun to think in some classic old man ways. What is my legacy? What will I leave behind when my short life finishes, to live on through my deeds? I don't want to be remembered for gorging myself on blackberries and ice cream. So: (a) stop handwaving over the fact that you expect others to pay for your retirement on Mars - (b) Stop thinking that the object of your desire has some inherent, universal "good" - it doesn't. It's just something you want.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

Another issue with the use of the term colonization is that they will never become self sufficient. They will always be dependent on resupply from earth. There are too many different items that are not creatable in the near future on Mars. Here is a short list of some of them;
The foundry to build the foundry to make metal.
The chemicals to build all the plastic necessary to build the greenhouses to create the rubber for all the seals needed.
The high precision milling equipment needed to create all the high precision living environments. Leaky homes don't last long.

Colonies were supported for a time until they could begin to return resources to the mother country. This is never going to happen with Mars. There are no resources on Mars that are less expensive or more desirable than what is found on Earth. Sorry but "because we can and it is cool " are not reasons to waste large quantities of money and resources for the small return in research.

The people sent to Mars will last slightly longer than the time it takes for the public to lose interest and the funding for resupply to dry up. At some point the question "Do we spend millions to keep a few people alive on Mars who are just doing research or spend that same money to keep tens of thousands alive on earth who are contributing to daily life?" I think the former would be difficult to justify.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[gweihir]

Well, the strategy to get people to do really, really stupid things is to glorify it somehow. This thread alone already shows there is an abundance of idiots that are willing to go along with it.

As to the example in question, nothing worthwhile was learned by these early expeditions.

Why Mars? (Or the Moon?) There is this particular brand of suicidal idiot that thinks we can ruin the earth, because we can then just move on to another planet. That is not going to happen anytime soon in this universe. Far more likely is that the current civilization will collapse from its own inability to understand its situation and the limitations it comes with. Would not be the first time and is basically inevitable at this point, if still 50-150 years away.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[DM9290]

I'm a fair bit younger than you, but I've already begun to think in some classic old man ways. What is my legacy? What will I leave behind when my short life finishes, to live on through my deeds? I don't want to be remembered for gorging myself on blackberries and ice cream. So: (a) stop handwaving over the fact that you expect others to pay for your retirement on Mars - (b) Stop thinking that the object of your desire has some inherent, universal "good" - it doesn't. It's just something you want.

And yet, all you will be remembered for is gorging yourself on blackberries and ice cream and someone else will be remembered for being the first living human being to step foot on mars.

It's too bad you can't figure out why 1 accomplishment is more significant than the other.

Enjoy the rest of your meaningless life.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Godin21]

Yet.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[R3d M3rcury]

I've got somewhere between 60 and 70 years left on Earth, max.

So I'm guessing you're somewhere in your 20s--or an optimistic 30-something.

But I'd be on Mars.

I'm sort of reminded of the old Futurama episode where they go to the Moon and there are various stupid tchotkes that end with "...on the Moon!" (The best one was the T-Shirt that said, "I'm with Stupid...On The Moon!") So the whole, "I'd be on Mars!" doesn't make much sense to me. I could grab a scuba tank, tie lead weights to my feet and be dropped off a ship over the Mariana Trench. Then I'd be in the deepest part of the ocean! Not that I could do much down there and I'd probably die on the way down.

Think of what the species would learn from a mission to Mars. That's well worth my life and gladly traded.

I agree with the first part--namely what we could learn by sending people to Mars to study the planet and bring them home safely. But "one way trips"? I don't think we learn nearly as much.

Consider the Apollo missions. We learned a lot from the rocks that were brought back. No return mission means nothing brought back. So you'd better have all the electron microscopes and other things like that with you--otherwise you won't be learning nearly as much as you think.

We also run into a "talent" issue. One issue that the geologists had with the Apollo missions were that Astronauts, while having many skills at piloting high-performance aircraft, didn't know one rock from another rock and why one rock might be more interesting. So if you're going there to study the rocks, a guy who knows scuba diving and how to build cool stuff isn't going to be much help.

Re:Lesbians in space

[0111 1110]

In order to make the reality show Lesbians on Mars profitable you'd have to make all of them hot. No way is a hot girl ever going on a suicide mission of any kind. Hot girls may threaten suicide from time to time, but they never actually do it. In addition they don't care about other planets or space stuff. In fact I would say, short of forcing them you would never get an attractive female on that ship. So you're basically talking about a bunch of guys with maybe a token crazy chick.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[WrongMonkey]

It's too bad that you think the meaningfulness of life should be measured by how memorable your accomplishments are.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[WrongMonkey]

Point of order: Polo, Columbus and Magellan did not go where no one else had been. There were people there to greet them when they arrived at their respective destinations. And, of course, the Wright brothers didn't really go anywhere new at all.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Rhacman]

To be honest this is my primary concern with this whole idea, it's a massive money pit when we have more than enough home grown problems that need solving. Once those 'colonists' are up there and initial interest dies off, the funding angle quickly shifts to Sally Struthers begging us saying "for only 2 million dollars a day you can save the lives of these brave colonists, that's less that the cost of a million cups of coffee!" Now who are your charitable donations going towards? Nobody on this planet will have it half as bad as those colonists if they don't get their resupplies all for a problem we invented because we felt we didn't have enough problems already.

Some people claim that we need to hurry up and colonize other planets to avoid extinction from a potential catastrophe on Earth. It would take a pretty big catastrophe on Earth for the Earth to even come close to how inhospitable Mars _already_ is! Others may disagree with me but Earth is my last stand. If we haven't figured out how to protect it yet (more from ourselves than from meteors) then what are we doing wasting resources sending people to a desolate rock?

I'm all for space research. Lets keep tossing probes / rovers around the solar system and learn everything we can. Heck, if we find some unobtanium deposit somewhere that solves our energy problems then fine, lets break out the orbital laser batteries and flash-fry some blue aliens but as it stands this whole mission is just a science fiction wet dream / money pit. One day we'll be ready to indulge ourselves in colonizing other worlds, but right now we're asking for the keys to the family car while we are still riding our bike with the training wheels on.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[Goodyob]

Guess he wasn't firm enough about his decision

Re:WATER?

[downhole]

Heat may not be that big of a problem, actually. Heating energy is fairly constant proportional to temperature difference on Earth, because it all has roughly the same atmosphere. You real concern for heating is not outside temperature, but heat transfer rates. On Mars, with no atmosphere to speak of and a requirement to pressurize the living quarters, necessitating no material flow in or out and very thick walls, heat loss to the environment might actually be very low.

Space is even colder, but most of our spacecraft have to be artificially cooled, not heated, because the only heat transfer mechanism in space is radiation to the environment, which is very slow for the temperatures we are working at. Mars would add some limited conduction to the ground and probably very limited convection from the atmosphere. I haven't run any numbers for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if all of the equipment you need to live there (power generation, air handling, etc) generates enough heat that you have to artificially cool the habitat to compensate for it.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Xtifr]

But in Columbus's case, it was dumb luck. For all anyone (who actually knew the size of the world) knew, there was nothing but ocean out there for him to discover. He wasn't equipped to make it to the Indies, and he would have died if there hadn't been another honking big landmass out there for him to stumble across. Columbus's voyage is much more accurately described as a suicide mission than this.

(If the landmass hadn't been there, Columbus would have been little more than a tiny, tragic footnote to history; a valuable object lesson to those who ignore science.)

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dpilot]

I think the first part of the issue would be how quickly the new Martians could begin sourcing their own consumables. For a start, all of the organic matter available comes with them, and they've got to recycle to a fault. Presumably power is a tractable problem, once you get some infrastructure up there, and the NIMBY problems will be much smaller.

Obviously technology and manufactured goods are a bigger problem, but those are a longer-term problem. Again, part of the solution will be fanatical recycling, part of the solution will be a strong maker-culture. Probably the biggest problem is semiconductors, but fortunately those are generally small, light, and one of the lesser lifeline-to-Mother-Earth problems.

Difficult, yes. Impossible, I don't think so. Again, if they can solve the consumables problem, I think with a decent inital outlay they can become "nearly" self-sustaining, at least to the level where the taxpayers won't gripe too hard.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

The "strong maker-culture" just does not cut it. Maker-culture works great on earth where failure means just try again. On Mars failure could mean death or the loss of the colony. Take for example a door seal. It much be precision made from high quality materials under controlled conditions or it is prone to failure. A bad seal could mean the loss of precious O2 and water. Recycled seal material will not cut it as it is not high enough quality. Seals need replacing all the time in gritty harsh environments. The point is that when materials are recycled there will always be some material that is too contaminated to recycle. When dealing with plastics especially they recycle into lower grade material. Would you risk your life on a door seal that has been recycled 10 times? I sure would not.

You also forget that the recycling process takes machinery. To recycle all the different materials needed for a colony would require hundreds of tons of machinery and the space to house it. Then there is all the manufacturing space and machinery to make all the parts. Just think about the machinery it would require to make a window for one of the modules from a cracked one and ensure it is up to the same specs as one made on earth. You will find that it is impossible.

If one does not solve the long term, and I am talking 2+years, issues then one is dooming the project to failure. "Nearly" self-sustaining is not close enough as tax payers will gripe about pouring money down a hole so a few people can live on Mars. Ever seen the movie "Silent Running"?

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dpilot]

Yes. Making it go with a "maker-culture" requires some redundancy to begin with, and some resupply from Earth. I'm not talking totally self-sustaining, I'm talking sufficiently self-sustaining.

I suspect one unmanned mission to Mars a year - a big can full of what they can't make themselves could sail under the radar. It would be much cheaper than trying to bring them back - which is the ultimate argument. It would be interesting to see a "Let the Mars explorers and their children all die!" initiative put on the ballot.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[allcoolnameswheretak]

After some fact checking on the Internets, you appear to be correct. My bad.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Trogre]

But I'd be on Mars.... Did you push your life to the limits? Did you live up to your potential?

I'm sure your kids would take great comfort from that in their counselling sessions.

Not to sound snarky and I agree with nearly all of your post, but being a father to your kids is your most important job at present.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

I suspect one unmanned mission to Mars a year - a big can full of what they can't make themselves could sail under the radar

So you think $500 million a year to keep a few people alive on Mars would "sail under the radar". Frankly, I sure hope not. That $500 million could be much better used here on earth and effect many more people. I think it is interesting that so many people who propose "simple solutions" rarely look into costs and long term effects of those solutions. It will probably cost $10B to set up, $0.5B/year for the next 60 years. Are you really willing to commit $40B to put men on Mars? I am not.

Not a colony

[jklovanc]

It is not a colony as it will have to be continually re-supplied with parts and materials from Earth. At best it is an outpost.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[KeensMustard]

I'm a fair bit younger than you, but I've already begun to think in some classic old man ways. What is my legacy? What will I leave behind when my short life finishes, to live on through my deeds? I don't want to be remembered for gorging myself on blackberries and ice cream. So: (a) stop handwaving over the fact that you expect others to pay for your retirement on Mars - (b) Stop thinking that the object of your desire has some inherent, universal "good" - it doesn't. It's just something you want.

And yet, all you will be remembered for is gorging yourself on blackberries and ice cream and someone else will be remembered for being the first living human being to step foot on mars.

You appear to have completely missed the point - probably deliberately. Which reflects quite badly on you.

It's too bad you can't figure out why 1 accomplishment is more significant than the other.

It's too bad that you can't convince others of the importance of your cause, thus dooming yourself and your cause to the dusty box of history where we keep the quaint and pitiable. Perhaps if you could give us one reason why you should go to mars beyond the childish, the religious, the maniacal and the genocidal, we might put your request on the list of "things to possibly happen". Not at the top of the list, mind you. I repeat: "I WANT TO" doesn't qualify as an admirable ambition, any more than a child that wants to eat ice cream.

Enjoy the rest of your meaningless life.

So far the only experience I've had of your judgement indicates that it is not sound - consequently your judgements about my life and it's meaning have no significance.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[acid_andy]

Mike Hunt

or vagina.

Re:Do any of these propeller-heads know how nasty.

[Sockatume]

As opposed to a two-way Mars mission, where the Mars they visit is a tropical paradise? While I don't necessarily agree with the mission idea, the pitch is that most of the problems that have to be solved to get to Mars in the first place (spending a long time in a lifeless void) are the same problems that would have to be solved to leave the passengers there (spending a long time in a lifeless desert), with the considerable benefit that you don't have to haul the resources for a return trip.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[VortexCortex]

Yeah you're right, we should never have climed down from the trees, or walk out of the sea for that matter...

You're aware that we probably walked out of the water more recently than we "climbed down from the trees", right? Look at your skin. Why, it's not covered in fur is it? It's more like elephants, hippos, rhinos, or other hairless mammals. Nearly all of which had aquatic ancestors. See also: Dolphins, whales, Manatee, etc. None of those mammals have fur... The theory of us climbing down from the trees of the Savannah has been debunked for a while, yet no other theory is popularly adopted, or even sought. Chimps & apes do not mostly stand up vertically, but they always walk upright when wading in water. Apes can't learn to speak as us because they don't have good breath control -- Holding your breath is also of benefit to any aquatic mammals; So is "humming" and modulating the frequencies as a form of underwater communications, see: whale song. Most mammals get fat all over, it clogs everything up a lot more than in humans. Most mammals would die whereas a human can be +500Lbs and still live -- Why? It's because our fat is concentrated in a layer around the outside of our bodies -- You know what? That's a blubber layer.

I know you don't want to hear this, but your ancestors were gill-less mermaids and mermen.

Over 7 Billion Volunteer For 'suicide' by Asteroid

[VortexCortex]

Seriously, all astronomers will tell you it's only a matter of time until we're hit by a planet killing asteroid. We can avert such disaster, fling asteroids at it, gravity tugs, powerful "death ray" solar mirrors pushing it, etc. But only if we're sufficiently advanced in space travel, and having some off-world colonies is part of the deal. Mars is the easy-mode before we do the asteroid belt, or deep space, collecting all our matter/energy needs from nebulae and what-not. If we choose to stay on Earth and colonize by robot proxy then the human race is doomed. I'd rather have people reminiscing over the good old days with their Sentient Machine Intelligence pals, than have the Mechano-electric races solemnly celebrate "Life Giver Day" and weep for us, their extinct makers...

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[queazocotal]

The above includes air and water as consumables.
4.5Kg is about a minimum for no recycling, just dumping the waste, and inputting food, water, and oxygen.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[mcgrew]

The book with Washington isn't yet finished.

Re:Lesbians in space

[Immerman]

Well, presumably physical fitness is a requirement, and that usually translates pretty well into "hotness", and headline hyperbole aside it's not a "suicide" mission except in the sense that any colonization is - you won't be returning to what was once home, but with a bit of luck it'll still be old age that kills you.

And while I'll freely admit that most applicants will probably be male since there are *on average* psychological differences. I'm pretty sure that the standard deviation is wider than the discrepancy though, so you' should still have plenty of women interested. It might even be that adventure/hardship seeking correlates somewhat with homosexuality among women - it seems to me that elevated testosterone levels might contribute to both.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[Wolfrider]

--No, I think that was Gene Masseth...

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[ceoyoyo]

There's a little matter of what to breathe....

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ceoyoyo]

The only reason Columbus got any funding for his trip was that he calculated the circumference of the Earth (incorrectly) showing that it would NOT be a suicide mission. When they started to get close to the point of no return his crew started to get mutinous.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ceoyoyo]

They're planning on funding resupply mostly through an ongoing reality show.

So yes, it's a suicide mission.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[ceoyoyo]

Except that Columbus talked some gullible Spaniards into believing the circumference of the Earth is a quarter of what it actually is. Before that break he couldn't get funding because... it was a suicide mission.

Today we're probably willing to fund suicide missions because we get to watch the result on TV.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[cusco]

You must live a very boring life.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Beardo the Bearded]

Just like your mom, I don't always start with the biggest things first.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[cusco]

The astronauts trained intesively with geologists before they left, including Gene Shoemaker. They actually did an excellent job of selecting, photographing, documenting and bringing back geological samples. Did they do as good a job as Harrison Schmidtt, an actual geologist? No, of course not, but no geologist alive at that time could have landed Apollo 11 successfully.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dpilot]

To start, I also don't think the Mars Colony idea is without value to others besides space nuts. (like me) In order to work, it's going to be the Gonzo leading edge of recycling, conservation, and environmentalism. What they learn there can help make things better here.

(below assumes you're a US taxpayer)
Are you conscious of spending $300-400 billion each year subsidizing oil exploration by highly profitable companies?

Are you conscious of spending more than the rest of the world put together for defense, for what is probably not the largest standing military in the world, let along bigger than all combined? I know it's higher tech, but it's also more finicky. There are also weapons systems being developed that the military doesn't want, that keep on because the work is being done in the district of a powerful Congress-critter. Yes, it's a good military, but I strongly suspect that we're paying something above top dollar for it.

Are you conscious of the extent to which we subsidize transportation in the US, to the point that big outfits that ship everything all over the Earth not only can exist, but can out compete smaller more efficient companies? Cheap transportation helps make BIG better, and taxpayers are paying for at least some of it.

Speaking of Wal Mart, are you aware of your "Wal Mart subsidy" coming out of your tax dollars. Something like half of their employees are on food stamps, because they don't really pay a livable wage. Our taxes at work.

Space is merely an easy, visible target. Even if it were to be considered a waste, which upon careful examination it never is, it would be a drop in the bucked compared to other wastes in the budget - noise that shouldn't be the first thing to go after.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

So your argument boils down to "We waste money on other things so lets waste money on this too". Sorry but "two wrongs do not make a right".

Recycling technology designed for a Mars colony would be very different that that on Earth if only in scale. A system designed to handle a couple of tons a month is very different from a system designed to handle a couple thousand tons a day. Give real example of technology developed on Mars that is actually transferable and viable on Earth. Sorry by the categories of "recycling, conservation, and environmentalism" are too broad, I am looking for specific examples of technology that must be developed on Mars.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[Godin21]

"Well, thats your opinion. The Apollo astronauts knew they'd be home within 3 days if everything went ok. This is a whole different ball game." The folks on the Mayflower knew they'd never be seeing home again, yet they set sail for a new land, and new opportunities. Adrenaline junkies? Maladjusted? No, I don't think so. I think your perspective may be skewed by a fear of the unknown and a desire to hold on to your current standard of living. Not everyone is motivated in such a way.

There is a lot more universe out there to discover. Some of it is across a mountain range, or across an ocean. But some of it is across a vast expanse of space. Let's go check it out! See what we can find. It just might be amazing.

Re:They've already announced their picks for the c

[TaxDoktor]

Can I sign people up, perhaps my ex :-) It would be great to have her on the moon..... do we still pay spousal support if people are no longer on the planet ?

I would volunteer but ..

[Rastl]

I didn't read the requirements but since I'm on medications I need to take for the rest of my life my guess is that I wouldn't even make the first cut. I also don't have any specialized skills to begin setting up a colony.

About the "suicide mission" thing. Life is a suicide mission if you really think about it. I don't have any problem with wanting to be part of something bigger even if it means I won't live to see the results.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dpilot]

No, I'm saying if you're really concerned about waste, there are bigger things with less value to go after. If Mars has no paybacks you're being ineffectual, stepping over dollars to pick up nickels. If Mars does have paybacks, you're being downright counter-productive.

Scale would be different I agree - I'm more after the base technologies. Some technologies don't scale, some do. Some will be radically different ideas that came up because Mars is completely outside the box - perhaps not directly usable, but would suggest things that could be done here.

The one thing I can think of offhand is "no landfills, only temporary storage depots." We're quick to throw things away on Earth, into the landfill. Some things (iron, aluminum, glass, paper) we recycle, some incredibly valuable things (high-strength exotic magnets) we don't. We don't even explore the idea, because the landfill is just so easy, and we're only beginning to be worried about the supply. It doesn't have to be developed on Mars, but because we're lazy here on Earth, we won't do it here.

Beyond that, if my crystal ball were good enough to hand you certainties I wouldn't be wasting my time with you on Slashdot.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

Nothing you have stated could not be developed without a Mars station. We are willing to pay large costs to recycle materials on mars because getting the material there is so expensive. On earth, getting new material is much less than recycling most material. That is not going to change for a long time.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[dpilot]

Can and will are often two different things. Sometimes we are forced to do something because of special circumstances, and then find it more generally applicable, once we've gotten over the hump.

Getting new material depends on the material. The current wasteful attitude toward helium is one of the stupidest things Congress has ever done.

Tell you what. Respond to this and you can have the last word. I believe you're shortsighted and wrong. You can believe I'm too blue-sky and an out-and-out fool. Have fun wallowing.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[rubycodez]

get real, for US government with 1+ trillion dollar budget $500,000,000 doesn't even cover copier paper. the money is essentially zero.

you want to talk about saving money, has to be on order of tens of billions of dollars or more or it doesn't even matter. Not fighting wars of choice would be example. Leave the space program and other science that runs on fumes alone

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[rubycodez]

no, the argument is "we waste tens of billions killing and maiming others so spending a little on science that benefits the whole human race doesn't matter"

Space is where resources are, there is everything from metals to free energy in space.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[rubycodez]

air and water can mostly be recycled, technology for that done deal long ago. the only issue is replacing that which is lost. with a military-type nuclear reactor (fueled for 20+ years), can make air on Mars and capture water.

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[rubycodez]

turning CO2 back into oxygen is long solved problem, the issue is only to replenish that which is lost. with nuclear reactor (95%+ enriched with 20+ year life) could make oxygen from mar's atmosphere

Re:Suicide mission? Or one-way trip?

[ceoyoyo]

Making oxygen is an involved, energy intensive process. Betting your life on it working, and continuing to work for decades, on Mars, is probably not such a hot idea.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

There is a difference between saving money and not spending more. When money flows through channels that already exist, military spending, it is easy to make it flow faster. When opening a new channel, like establishing a Mars base, the expenditure will be looked at very closely. $500M is 1/3 of NASA's yearly planetary science budget. NASA is having enough trouble getting money for useful things. Getting money to sustain human life on Mars is much more difficult to justify.

Re:If you volunteer, then you are not qualified...

[jklovanc]

Space is where resources are, there is everything from metals to free energy in space.

That's great except for one major issue. When it costs 10x as much to return those resources to Earth than it does to produce them on earth then the fact that they exist is irrelevant. By the way, there is not such thing as "free energy" as it costs money to collect and transport it. By you definition coal is free energy because we didn't have to make the coal.

e^x

[sourcerror]

Playing the the devils advocate here: the idea is that we should have a good survey before start changing things on Mars. With physical/chemical contamination you do little contamination, you expect little effect. With biological contamination you have to worry about the exponential growth factor.