Will Mars be a One-way Trip? 724
alexj33 writes "Will humans ever really go to Mars? Let's face it, the obstacles are quite daunting. Not only are there numerous, difficult, technical issues to overcome, but the political will and perseverance of any one nation to undertake such an arduous task is huge. However, one former NASA engineer believes a human mission to Mars is quite possible, and such an event would unify the world as never before. But Jim McLane's proposal includes a couple of major caveats: the trip to Mars should be one-way, and have a crew of only one person."
A few very complicating points... (Score:4, Interesting)
Living alone:
- Biosphere 2 was huge, and *on earth.* It failed. The guy would need a *lot* of support from earth. If it doesn't come during the launch window, fatal results. Come to think of it, almost every adverse scenario results in certain death.
- We have not even done this on the moon yet. Shouldn't this be tried first? Almost all of the mars mission proposals I've seen require a moon base.
Waste: Lots of it. This guy is not going to live in a self-sufficient environment (Biosphere argument) and thus will leave a lot of mars-debris all around. I guess this is minor and some would argue inevitable, but he is going to colonize the whole planet with his own waste products of all sorts.
A thought question: Will a mars mission not irreversibly contaminate Mars? I have often thought about the moon - it used to be sterile, but now there is human / earth bacteria everywhere around the landing sites. NASA does not sterilize probes it sends. What's that? Bacteria can't survive? Actually, they probably can - many species are capable of withstanding cosmic rays and zero atmosphere, etc.
Cue the "I nominate Mitch Bainwol" comments...
At least two? (Score:3, Interesting)
So instead of meditating on a mountain... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
THink of the publicity (Score:4, Interesting)
No man left behind!
One way trip (Score:2, Interesting)
Could we send someone depressed or with little will to live? Suicidal people can become very distraught if they are suddenly faced with terminal cancer. It could be disasterous if weeks into the trip they realize that they want to live after all. We would have to send someone stable and yet willing to face inevitable death. How many of you would sign up for a one way trip and not have buyer's remorse?
Re:Red Mars (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Redundancy? (Score:1, Interesting)
A good point. Sending a human is pointless as a scientific endevour as it is far more expensive, risky and morally questionable than sending a probe and has no real advantages over it. The only real difference is the symbolic act of a human opening the 'frontier' of Mars, boldly going forwards and giving their lives to advance humanity another baby-step.
Of course it would be reported as an heroic and selfless act in the name of science, because we all love heroic selflessness, it sounds so much better than 'Poor Bugger Dies for PR Stunt'
One-way trip? Sure! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
one-way trip to mars (Score:-1, Interesting)
And now someone else suggests it and it's big news?
Alton Moore
Mission, TX
Re:Redundancy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody else seems to be reading between the lines here. The person who accepts this mission is going to Mars to die. Whatever happens.
We normally pick young, fit astronauts with their whole lives ahead of them. This proposed mission is philosophically profound and does have the potential to unite the world in a way that the original Moon landing did. The suggestion is a piece of genius!
Getting to Mars is very difficult, but a return mission is bordering on impossible right now. So we pick a mature (read old), experienced astronaut who may be facing their last years and send them on the last and ultimate journey of a lifetime. The symbolism is not pointless, it is a statement of human fragility and mortality combined with enormous potential and sacrifice.
If the first (and possibly last) man on Mars isn't top TV ratings I don't know what would be.
Resonances of the Martian Chronicals here.
I, for one, (Score:4, Interesting)
(fyi: link
Red Mars (Score:3, Interesting)
Not quite right (Score:5, Interesting)
- Nukes is about our best bet. Sadly, ppl fight that. But the Japaneses system that is designed to support 10-100 MW would be ideal (20 MW, for 30+ years).
- Solar being beamed. A simple power sat above that beams down the energy. Probably not a bad way to disribute power around the planet, but I would not want to depend on it.
- Geo-thermal. There is some very good indication that there is heat close to the surface in several areas. That could change everything. Provide clean power and heat. I would still prefer the above as well.
Once we have energy there, it is easy to have robots build. Even a remote control arm can work at burying several Bigelow systems. Once buried AND a garden is started for food, then we are good to go. There is no doubt that many ppl would volunteer. I know that If I were younger, I would.BTW, one weird idea would be to send a bunch of women and have them serve as incubators. In particular, if we send several missions of women AND zygotes, then we can grow a colony there. It may be a lot cheap approach to guarantee bio-diversity. In fact, I would think that once we have several small groups there, that we should send not just human zygotes, but also seeds and a number of animal zygotes. it would be useful for just in case.
Re:Typical Slashdot misses the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Screw that. Things have changed (Score:3, Interesting)
But Yeah, we need to get back our industrial production.
I agree; I volunteer you. (Score:5, Interesting)
This will not be a suicide mission. The ppl that go first, will be thought of like Leif Erickson, or Christopher Columbus (ignoring all the down sides on him). Even if my life were cut down to another 10 years, it makes the life worth living. I am amazed at the complete lack of balls on these postings. Our society has become WAY too soft. We no longer seem to put pride on our accomplishment, only on what we accumulate. That is a real sad state of affairs for the west and shows me a lot about us.
I am truly glad that you have the balls and the foresight to see this for what it is; a chance to change the future. Hell, you would do more for earth than bill gates has.
Re:I mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
Consider how much we could accomplish by sending one person to Mars (and keep him/her alive for, say a month on the planet) as compared to sending a semi-autonomous robot.
And humans would be way cheaper, there are already 6 billion of them to choose from!
We need to start taking risks again if we want to rapidly explore the solar system. And one way missions sound perfectly reasonable.
So what if we loose some human lives? We're only talking about a few per year at best. Compare that to the number of casualties in the smallest of conflicts on Earth even today. At least this way the human lives would have been worth something.
Why waste decades developing automated rovers when humans are available and can do a far better job and perhaps accomplish more in a single visit than all non-human explorations so far.
conundrum (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Redundancy? (Score:3, Interesting)
2 words -semi-autonomus systems.
Why would you think of trying to control anything in "real time" from earth? Higher-level constructs make more sense.
A single command sequence could be "Go to coordinate x,y; take pics; grab a sample of soil; make spectrographic analysis; report; wait for instructions". Send it and forget it.
Re:I mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if another culture will do it, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it as a return trip.
Other propulsions systems could make a round trip feasible by allowing solar powered launch. A culture that believes big, loud, exciting rockets are the only way to lift things into orbit, that will not commit any funding to alternative designs which work in computer simulations and have been around since the late nineteen eighties while supporting development of further rocket technology, that culture will fail to go much beyond the moon return.
To take the canoe example, do you think the Polynesians powered their canoes by facing backward and throwing shit overboard?
Re:I fail to see why the parent it modded down (Score:-1, Interesting)
When I've got mod points, I browse at -1 to spot abuse. Starting some time in the past week or so, I've been seeing a lot of AC posts that start at -1, but other AC posts that start at 0. I don't know what's going on either, but it's annoying.
ACs should start at 0; the purpose of -1 is to downmod the one or two usual trolls. Right now, a lot of good 0-rated posts are being lumped in with the copypasta. The old system worked much better; only one or two mod points had to be wasted to knock the copypasta/first/trolls to -1.
Re:I nominate Jim McLane to go.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd go. (Score:3, Interesting)
Y'know, that sort of "stunt" approach doesn't seem all that far removed from what we actually got. I get depressed every time I think about where we could have been by now... and we're still eating our seed corn.
Why pointless camping trips? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Two? No, one. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Simple solution - send someone dying from cance (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a page out of the McDonald's business plan, and design your technology so that there is a bare minimum of training necessary. The First Martian will have 200 days to study up once they are in the sky. It gives them something to do while they wait, and the more they study the longer they will likely live when they get there. Hella motivation, and an opportunity for someone to truly maximize the last days of their life. But cancer or not, I'm sure there will be volunteers.
Vote them off the planet (Score:3, Interesting)
If voters vote for a very disliked person, "such an event would unify the world as never before".
It's a bit like Survivor
I suggested this a few years ago, around that time my country (Malaysia) had a stupid astronaut program - which is basically we pay for some silly chap to transfer public money to Russia (and probably some local crony pockets). I proposed that instead we should be allowed to vote a few politicians for one way trip to space. Even if they decline the trip, it would be worth it.
Re: Immortality (Score:2, Interesting)
Catch the shuttle to mars (Score:5, Interesting)
It is tempting to scale up the Apollo program when looking at Mars. However, the concept of a single multistage rocket is perhaps not the way to go.
If Mars goes around the sun in about 2 earth years, then there is an elliptical orbit that is tangential to mars and earth that will represent the minimum energy routes to Mars. The trip would take somewhere between half an earth year and half a Martian year - let's say about 8-10 months. You could get to Mars faster if you kept your foot to the floor, but that would waste a lot of fuel. So - this route is not far from the optimum route you might take even if you had ion engines, provided our two planets were in the right place.
The craft has got to be big. It has to have room enough to live in for a year or so, with backup. You could strap some enormous chemical rocket that was shipped into space. However, suppose you launched the thing without anyone inside. It can sit in space for years. It could be slowly be raised in orbit using earth-moon tidal forces with ion engine pumping, and a final slinghot. Having escaped the earth-moon system it could slowly accelerate using ion engines or solar sails to get towards Mars. It would take a quick slingshot or aerobrake around Mars and head back towards Earth. If it is in the right orbit, it could get back to Earth without any propulsion, and have enough velocity to get back to Mars' orbit again. Now it is going nice and fast, our passengeers can get on. This time, we are not accelerating the whole living environment, but just the people and their hand luggage to get them to the rendevous, and a conventional rocket might do for that.
Once we have got this far, we then have a big, habitable volume going between Earth's orbit and Mars' orbit. With a bit of fine tuning, we can probably arrange for it to pas Mars and Earth again. This means if we can generate fuel on Mars for a lifting body to get people to rendevous with the big craft, then going back is not only possible, it is almost free, particularly if you are taking a relief crew out.
Do you remember the bit in "The Right Stuff" where someone proposed and volunteered to go to the moon in the hope that they could be resupplied until a vehicle for the return journey could be built? They didn't do it then. I guess we won't do it now. It is interesting to wonder why we would go through huge expense to return one person when we have so many, and the same money would save more lives in other ways. However, we won't do it if we don't have to, and I don't think we do.
Re:I mean... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Two? No, one. (Score:4, Interesting)
I laughed tho.
and we wonder why the US space program sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:There is a very real difference (Score:-1, Interesting)
There is more awareness now of 'foreign' casualties - I live in Chicago, and one of the more popular morning radio hosts here does a war recap every day at 6 am CST. He does focus on war dead, but the show has a very anti-war slant, and he also covers reported Iraqui casualties, when those figures are available - which is not so frequently, due largely to the relative ease of counting US military members versus civilians, but he tries.
I submit there is still not enough of an awareness of the 'true cost' of any war, at least among the US population. As a former active-duty Marine, I would have volunteered to go to Rwanda (I was on active duty at the time) and am to this day angry at the Clinton administration for knowingly allowing almost a million people to be slaughtered. People are upset by such things here, but we (US) seem to be horrible at pre-planning, follow-through or actual reasoned thought about problems that arise, both here and abroad. For you non-Americans reading this, consider the following - we incarcerate more of our population than anyone else, even Russia (now), most of whom are imprisoned for non-violent offenses (drugs, usually). Our 'war on drugs' has dragged on for two decades, and has cost billions. Does that stop us? Nope. If one publicly endorses change, however, people here (in my experience) point to the UK and scream, "Yah, but in England murderers get off easy!" (with some justification, it must be said, and yes, *I* know that England != UK, but many do not - I'm paraphrasing a conversation I recently had; and yes, drug use is different than murder, but the principle is being 'soft on crime' which is political death in the US).
What do we call it when we keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome?
Then again, would the rest of the world prefer it if we just withdrew and "avoided foreign entanglements" ? There is a vocal contingent here in the US espousing just that. Personally I would like to see more cooperation and coordination - 'unilaterality' is generally a bad idea no matter who does it.