One-Way Ticket: Mars One Project Applicants Top 100,000 240
Bas Lansdorp's projected trip to Mars has a well-known catch: the ticket to space is free (rather than the millions of dollars for the more conventional kind of space travel available to civilians), but it's one-way only. That's a downside for any potential astronauts who'd like to do things like visit the beach or ever see their Earthside family again in person. Still, the Mars One project announced this week that more than 100,000 volunteers have announced their willingness to forsake this planet in favor of the next. The application process is ongoing; have you signed up?
Re:what happens if the chick get pregnant? (Score:5, Informative)
The OP is probably referring to the fact that conception and gestation are likely impossible on Mars due to it's low gravity.
That's not a fact. That's unfounded speculation.
1. The child will be unable to travel to Earth, because the higher gravity of earth will kill him or her.
More speculation. There's no data on which to base that conclusion. No person have ever been in gravity between 0 m/s2 and 9.8 m/s2 for more than a few days.
2. If the child is part of this group then it will die of starvation or whatever, just as they will, except of course, they chose to die, and the child didn't. It's an ethical minefield.
That's pretty likely.
Mars will be in a very disadvantageous position WRT to Earth. They will lack power, industrial skills, economies of scale freedom of movement, everything that goes to making a society prosperous. Mars has nothing the Earth dwellers want or need, and craves the things the Earth can provide. ... Mars lacks the water and sunlight to be competitive or even self sufficient agriculturally, it lacks the power, and likely, the metals needed for industrialisation, it cannot support a population large enough for a diversified economy. Mars will be a ghetto. Unemployment and crime will be rampant.
That also seems likely.
Not that bad (Score:5, Informative)
They will need radiation shielding on Mars too.
In a talk on current measurements for radiation levels on Mars I attended, the scientists responsible for the radiation measurement instrumentation said the rough dose you would get per year is around 100 x-rays worth. That's quite a lot, but not going to kill you anytime soon.
That was with little solar activity, but you could provide a shielded area to retreat to if something happened to hit while the sun was up.