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Mars One Selects Second Round Candidate Astronauts
First time accepted submitter techfilz writes "The Mars One Project has selected 1058 second round candidates out of more than 200 000 applicants from over 140 countries. There are another two selection rounds to go before the lucky few get a one way trip to Mars. Starting in 2018, four astronauts will leave for Mars every two years to begin a human settlement partly funded by crowdsourcing and a reality TV show."
Actually, Neil Armstrong was not able to get life insurance before the Apollo mission, where they had a 50% chance of returning alive. He signed hundreds of photos for his wife to sell for $50 each (or something like that). He tried to make sure she had enough to survive on if he died by selling his autographs.
The technology has existed for decades
Actually, no.
We can send robots to Mars, but we still don't have the technology to send people there -
- A craft that can support people for the ~200-day journey to Mars through interplanetary space (including protecting them from ionizing radiation) has never been built and we don't know how.
- The creation of a landing craft is a tremendous challenge. Granted, Mars One is 'supposedly' a one-way trip so many of these issues are mitigated, but assuming the astronauts would want to come home you need to launch from the surface of Mars and then return to earth. No craft that has ever landed on Mars has returned to terra firma.
Wired had a good overview of these issues here -
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/31/getting-to-mars