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Mars One Has 78,000 Applicants

Posted by Unknown on from the send-me-to-space dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mars One reports that 78,000 people have volunteered for a one-way ticket to Mars. A quick calculation shows that this means people lined up coast-to-coast in a line with only 40cm per person! (As Robert Zubrin already predicted). If you want, you can still go and sign up (or sign up your worst enemy). Or you can just look at some videos of the would-be travelers."

5 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. 312 km coast to coast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    78000 people * 40 cm = 3120000 cm
    3120000 cm = 312000 m = 312 km

    Which two coasts are we talking about?

    1. Re:312 km coast to coast by Ed_1024 · · Score: 2, Informative

      78,000 * 0.4 = 31,200m / 31.2km.

      Long Island coasts, it seems. I hope they use better math when designing the spacecraft...

    2. Re:312 km coast to coast by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Informative

      If each of these people were 64 meters wide this would work out.

    3. Re:312 km coast to coast by esampson · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mercifully it looks like the math error might be on the part of the poster rather than the article. I did a quick skim of the article and didn't see anywhere were they mentioned anything like how far apart people would be if stretched from coast to coast.

      Of course it is always possible that the article was edited by the time I saw it but since the post doesn't appear to be a quote ripped from the site Occam's Razor is that the poster wrote up the post, did the math, and got it wrong.

  2. Math is way off. by butlerm · · Score: 5, Informative

    Somebody needs a math lesson. 3000 miles * 5280 feet per mile / 78000 = 203 feet. That is a tad more than 40 cm.