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Mars-one

EDF

By EDF
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Nibb31

Nibb31

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Yet another unfunded powerpoint project. The space industry is littered with abandoned projects like this.

And the whole idea is completely dumb. You don\'t colonize a planet by sending 2 or 3 people on a one-way ticket to live in tin cans for the rest of their life. It would be totally unethical. No way will they ever get funding for that.

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Ted

Ted

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Wow.

Amazing idea, hopefully it will happen. I wonder what they plan to do about solar flares, radiation etc.

It\'s nice to see as well that we, as a society driven by mostly monetary rewards, haven\'t given up on the final frontier.

By the way, surely this should be in \'Off-Topic\'?

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Kryten

Kryten

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Uh... They\'re already getting funding. From a lot of NASA\'s contacts, too... One I noticed was ILC Dover.

Read that again. They have \'letters of interest\' from those companies, nothing more. They actually intend to get funding through advertising. $5 billion worth of funding.

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Endeavour

Endeavour

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Yet another unfunded powerpoint project. The space industry is littered with abandoned projects like this.

And the whole idea is completely dumb. You don\'t colonize a planet by sending 2 or 3 people on a one-way ticket to live in tin cans for the rest of their life. It would be totally unethical. No way will they ever get funding for that.

That is exactly how you colonize. Do you think those people who colonized in Africa and the Americas ever thought they would go back home? No. They knew they would find a way to live in the new world or die. It\'s unfortunate. The best way I see to do it, however, is to send robots to set up the base for the habitat before the colonizers arrive, so they have an easier time with it.

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Kryten

Kryten

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He didn\'t mean the \'not coming back\', he meant \'living in a giant hamster habitat\'. The first set of colonists are going to be stuck in one dragon for more than a year, that\'s inevitably going to have nasty effects psychologically.

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Ted

Ted

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He didn\'t mean the \'not coming back\', he meant \'living in a giant hamster habitat\'. The first set of colonists are going to be stuck in one dragon for more than a year, that\'s inevitably going to have nasty effects psychologically.

Tell that to Valeri Polyakov who spent 437 days in one duration in Mir.

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Endeavour

Endeavour

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They really need to put the shelter underground. Otherwise they will have to send up a lot of really heavy radiation shielding. If they didn\'t cancer and mutations would kill any colonists. Also, something to simulate Earth\'s gravity would be needed if they wanted to be healthy.

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hunter558

hunter558

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The point of living on mars is that there are tons of valuable heavy metals there, its also for the value of science, curiosity of humans is our single best asset, its what made everything that we take for granted today. It wasn\'t always considered valuable or useful knowledge but much of what we know today is vital to modern human survival. While i do agree with colonizing mars, you\'d think it\'d be easier to send people for several months or years at a time and then retrieve them, switching them out with fresh recruits, using the same vehicle they used to get there. Slowly but surely you build up the size of the colony so you can send more people there, and less people need to be brought back because its larger and more habitable. Just my 2 cents

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willow

willow

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Strictly speaking the same happened for the first travellers who went to the Americas... Most of them would never return.

The plan isn\'t to return, but that really doesn\'t mean it won\'t happen. It\'s very likely that in the coming 30 years mars travel will be much easier than it is today. Especially if there is already a base there :)

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OtherDalfite

OtherDalfite

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In RP, I said I was sending people permenantly into space. They said it was inhumane, even though they voulenteered. Plus, what if they die?

They know the risks. I\'m sure some of the volunteers will be going along because the risk gives them a thrill. All in all, one must always be prepared to give their life for the sake of science.

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Endeavour

Endeavour

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The point of living on mars is that there are tons of valuable heavy metals there, its also for the value of science, curiosity of humans is our single best asset, its what made everything that we take for granted today. It wasn\'t always considered valuable or useful knowledge but much of what we know today is vital to modern human survival. While i do agree with colonizing mars, you\'d think it\'d be easier to send people for several months or years at a time and then retrieve them, switching them out with fresh recruits, using the same vehicle they used to get there. Slowly but surely you build up the size of the colony so you can send more people there, and less people need to be brought back because its larger and more habitable. Just my 2 cents

Retrieving them and bringing them home would be way harder than leaving them there. They would need enough fuel to make the jouney twice in a single rocket.

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Charzy

Charzy

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The difference is that these guys will have food and (hopefully) will be provided with a means of getting oxygen from the martian atmosphere (if there even is oxygen in the martian atmosphere)

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Nibb31

Nibb31

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The point of living on mars is that there are tons of valuable heavy metals there, its also for the value of science, curiosity of humans is our single best asset, its what made everything that we take for granted today.

If you go there to bring back heavy metals (which would be stupid because they would cost billions of dollars for a few kilograms, it would be cheaper to extract them from seawater traces), that means that you have the means of returning humans. Then it would not be a one-way trip, which is what this specific Mars One project is about.

They will have volunteered for it, they won\'t be forced to do it.

How can it be inhumane?

In the same way we don\'t allow medical experiments on live patients that would endanger their health. It\'s unethical. It\'s contrary to human dignity and human rights. It\'s assisting a very expensive suicide.

Strictly speaking the same happened for the first travellers who went to the Americas... Most of them would never return.

The plan isn\'t to return, but that really doesn\'t mean it won\'t happen. It\'s very likely that in the coming 30 years mars travel will be much easier than it is today. Especially if there is already a base there :)

The laws of physics are not going to change in 30 years. Going to the Moon, let alone Mars, is no easier now than it was 30 years ago. Why would that change?

Space is not the Americas. Going to Mars is nothing like crossing the Atlantic. Emigrants who left Europe for America knew that they could grow plants, hunt animals, breath, drink water... It would be easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica than to live on Mars.

The 'base' in this project is 5 or 6 Dragons connected together, with solar panels, supplies, and recycling equipment. Emigrating to Mars would mean that you would spend the rest of your life in a buried tin can, you would never breath fresh air again, never go outside for a walk without a heavily shielded space suit. The soil is sterile, the atmosphere is colder than Antarctica, there is radiation, and you would most likely be drinking recycled urine for the rest of your life. You would be stuck with 2 or 3 other team members for the rest of your life with no chance of ever seeing your friends or family or any other human being ever again.

And that is if everything goes well... Current technology is not capable of sustainable life support without supply from the outside. Biosphere 2 anyone ?

Those are far worse conditions than any of the 17th century colonials ever encountered in the Americas.

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