Meet a Group of Aspiring Mars Colonists 130
Velcroman1 writes "The group was down to Earth — but not for long, they hope. These folks want to go to Mars. 'I want off the planet – I want humanity off the planet,' declared Leila Zucker, 45, also known as 'Dr. Leila,' because she is, in fact, a doctor who works nearby in the emergency room at Howard University Hospital. She has yearned to be an astronaut — and a doctor — since the age of 3, she told FoxNews.com. 'One dream fulfilled, one to go,' she said happily. Zucker joined not a million, but 100 or so 'aspiring Martians' from across the country, one with green hair and costume antennae, for a 'Million Martian Meeting' held Saturday in Washington, D.C., which was sponsored by the Facebook page of the same name. The group came together as applicants of the Mars One project, an ambitious 10-year plan for a one-way trip to colonize the Red Planet."
Let's let them. (Score:1)
If they want it so bad, then by all means, let's toss 'em in a rocket and aim for the Red Planet.
Re:Let's let them. (Score:5, Funny)
You seem to be making assumptions upon the desired end-result.
Re:Let's let them. (Score:4, Insightful)
And who will pay for this rocket? Just putting a person in space is extraordinarily expensive, shooting them all to Mars is mind-blowingly expensive, and even if they're crazy people with absurd dreams(are they?) you'd want to get something for doing it.
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I'd pay to see them slowly die from starvation or lack of O2. I mean, that would be a TV first I think to have a reality TV show where the people get hypoxia.
Re:Let's let them. (Score:5, Informative)
With no way to send additional supplies
New supplies, and new colonists, would arrive every 2 years.
Also, shows like "Big Brother" work well for TV by the precise fact that they are very cheap to produce. The "Winner" gets half a million dollars. Most actors on popular sit-coms get paid more than that per episode.
These aren't actors, and they aren't getting paid. Their job is to set up a colony on Mars. They don't exactly need money.
I wonder if they even have the bandwidth to send back TV quality signals from Mars. What happens when it's on the far side of the sun? They will need to set up relay satellites to ensure they can always get a good signal.
They've done a feasibility study which consulted space experts from around the world. I'm pretty sure things like bandwidth and receiving a signal would have been high on their discussion list, considering that's how the project gets funded.
If you want to read more about it before poking holes in what they plan to do, you can check their FAQ [mars-one.com] or road map [mars-one.com]. The road map calls for 2 video streams by 2021, 2 years before people land, with a minimum of 4 streams by 2025, when the second team lands. The habitat (6 landers) and 2 rovers will already be on the planet by the time the first team lands, with 5 more landers just a few weeks behind them. Communication will go through a satellite orbiting Mars, and presumably there will be a relay satellite at one of the L4 or L5 points.
Even then I've seen lots of pictures from the Mars but I don't think I've seen too many videos.
That's because transmission of video from Mars has never been a priority. Here, it's a priority.
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With no way to send additional supplies
New supplies, and new colonists, would arrive every 2 years.
Paid for by what? Are the architects of this plan hoping that the general population will feel some responsibility to keep them alive, at our own cost, once the advertising money dries up? Let me tell you:
1. This is not a universally interesting product, and even those who are interested aren't really interested in the minutae and routine drudgery of life in a spaceship or hollowed out hole in the ground on Mars. People lose interest quickly.
2.We move quickly to justify inhumane choices: if they send the
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With no way to send additional supplies
New supplies, and new colonists, would arrive every 2 years.
That's how their argument is circular.
They say how, theoretically, the **first** Mars One can get out, 'media'...which sounds, theoretically, plausible....for **one** launch.
Then, on the feasibility front, Mars One lists off a big erector set list of equipment....that again, could **theorectically** be plausible.
But they don't say how the **other** launches will be paid for...their first method is out: no one is going to watch a tr
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These aren't actors, and they aren't getting paid. Their job is to set up a colony on Mars. They don't exactly need money.
The FAQ you linked quotes 6 billion for the mission cost, and even that seems like a big underestimate. Advertising cannot pay for this. History has shown that the public quickly becomes bored with space missions once the novelty wears off.
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if you look at the introductory video on the mars one website, it seems the intention is to fund the project through 'media'. The mars colony will essentially become an unending series of big brother
Yes. We will get to watch them die in real time. Either crash landing on Mars or going insane and killing each other or committing suicide before they get there.. A one way trip to Mars seems fun and exciting until you get 75% of the way there and the reality sinks in that you're going to die very soon.**
**Due to the fact that we still don't know how to safely land a vehicle full of people on Mars.
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Umm, I'm pretty sure we know how. The physics is well understood. There has just been no reason to do it yet.
And there is no reason to do it now.
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If we lose the Earth than Mars will not sustain the human race. It is too small, and too cold, and most crucially, it's gravity is such that we coudl nnver return to earth even when it recovers, if it is struck by something nasty (which is relatively unlikely). And there is no step beyond Mars, there is no where else - otherwise the advocates of this grand plan would have told us where that is. So our choices are, to invest massively in sustaining a Mars Colony an
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In contrast though, Mars One and it's quasi-religious disciples are something of a death cult. According to their proposal, the deaths of 7 billion people, the consequential loss of whole cultures, families, nations is considered a successful outcome. Of course the fact that this proposal amounts to genocide is never discussed.
Every time this topic arises I post thi [slashdot.org]
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Show me any series that makes billions of dollars. The series probably would not even pay for the interest on the capitol expended to get the players to Mars.
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What we get is them being off our planet.
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No, the GP was arguing for murder by suffocation, which is honestly a lot more torturous than most alternatives. It's just a really wasteful way to kill some people.
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It's not merely wasteful. It's also good television.
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Do they care what order?
Because one way is a LOT easier than the other way.
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you seem to be assuming a lot about the objective of my plan. I wasn't proposing an airtight spacecraft with safety mechanisms of any significant kind, nor an actual survivable landing, much less actual colonization equipment. I wasn't even planning to properly chart a trajectory. Iron sights on the current location of Mars or any other convenient star, cloud, or passing jetliner an hour before launch will suffice.
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And who will pay for this rocket? Just putting a person in space is extraordinarily expensive, shooting them all to Mars is mind-blowingly expensive, and even if they're crazy people with absurd dreams(are they?) you'd want to get something for doing it.
We're going to cut costs by not putting any fuel in the rocket. Then at launch time we'll anesthetize the crew, attach video screens over the ship's viewports, and move the rocket to the middle of the Australian Outback. Two years later we'll remove the video screens and see how long it takes them to figure out what planet they are on.
Now that will be quality TV!
A common misconception (Score:2)
If what she means is getting the entire (future) population off the planet, Randall of xkcd explained why that ain't gonna happen [xkcd.com].
The uncomfortable truth is that, while colonizing the Solar System may be plausible, evacuating Earth is not. This planet is not, in fact, disposable.
Re:A common misconception (Score:4, Insightful)
"This planet is not, in fact, disposable."
Strictly speaking, the fact that it cannot be evacuated does not make it indispensable, except to the people who are going to be left behind.
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Strictly speaking, the fact that it cannot be evacuated does not make it indispensable, except to the people who are going to be left behind.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
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Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Dramatic, action-packed. Bold and original in its presentation of breaking the fourth wall as a political act. 'Audience participation' element perhaps too intense for some.
Re:A common misconception (Score:5, Insightful)
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It depends on what your objectives are. If you want to make the human race resilient to a major catastrophe Earth (say a dinosaur-killing meteor) then a few city-sized colonies throughout the solar system will suffice, and I agree that's quite plausible.
Actually, in those circumstances, the Earth is still by far the most liveable place in the solar system, even in the days immediately following the strike. So the best strategy, in the event of an impending strike, is to stay here.
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do you not think everybody would be much happier than they are now?
Yes, I do not think everyone would be happy. My view is that the fundamental flaw in these happiness schemes is that humanity has evolved so that some degree of unhappiness and worry is not only normal, but necessary. If humanity got all that wonderful stuff (don't get me wrong, I'm cool with lots more beautiful people), they'd still have that unhappiness and worry, but they wouldn't have a good target for it. So there'd be plenty of hysteria and other mental illnesses as a result as people worry about imag
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Actually, we could [wikipedia.org] do it. Here's a video of a prototype [youtube.com] using high explosives to see if the concept would work at all. It turns out it's fairly self correcting for alignment, etc. The nuclear physics is well understood, and the launch of a 4000 ton vehicle (with 1300 tons of cargo!) would result in the equivalent fallout of a single 10 megaton H bomb.
It's time to send a few hundred volunteers to the Moon, Mars, and wherever else they want to go.
More Power (and Money) To Them! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree with the negativity of the first comments. Personally, I would gladly redirect a significant part of my taxes to an endeavour like this, instead of sinking money into less forward thinking bottomless pits the politicians created.
A one-way trip to Mars means sacrifice, and I applaud them - if they really mean it and won't chicken out the day of lauch. It would be an incredible exciting exploration and proof of concept.
Re:More Power (and Money) To Them! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it is hilarious that they (and you, apparently) really think that the technology will be available within 10 years to survive more than a couple days on Mars if they even got there.
What technology is missing? They do not have to develop new technology for this mission. We've constructed spacecraft in Earth orbit and launched people to them, we've landed spacecraft on both the moon and Mars, we can communicate through space, we have systems for producing oxygen, water, and food. What else is missing? You realize that the entire initial base will already be built by the time they even launch the people, right? By the time they lift off from Earth they will already know if the oxygen generators are producing oxygen, if the food generators are producing food, if the solar panels are producing power, etc.
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I think it is hilarious that they (and you, apparently) really think that the technology will be available within 10 years to survive more than a couple days on Mars if they even got there.
You know what? If there's technology that needs developing, then they can develop the technology. That gets around your supposed "hilarious" problem.
Also, I must admit to being a bit puzzled how you think a group can survive in deep space for six months to a year and yet only be able to survive two days on the surface of Mars.
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A one-way trip to Mars means sacrifice,
I disagree. To me it means giving people an opportunity to something they want to do that has never been done before. It is a sacrifice if you don't want to do it but see it as a better thing for other people. I see little or no benefit from an outpost on Mars. To me it is just another pit to throw money into. My question is what will they do when they get to Mars? All I see them as is glorified tourists supported by the hard working people of Earth. The scientific discoveries can be done much less expensi
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The reason to go to a different planet in general is because, eventually, the earth will get destroyed. There will be an apocalyptic event, and almost nothing on earth will survive. So, we need to begin planning for that eventuality. For the same reason we do backups, we need to learn to live on mars.
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That would be true if we had the technology to create a self sufficient colony on Mars. We do not have that technology yet. At best an outpost on Mars would last a few years if a catastrophe wiped out Earth. The less than 100 people that we can afford to support on Mars is not a viable gene pool. Mars is not a "life boat". I agree we need to plan but throwing money into a project that has no chance of becoming self sufficient is not progress.
To take your backup analogy a step further,.why make backups when
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Ofc we have the technology to have a self sufficient colony on mars.
We only lack the funds to shoot all the stuff needed over there.
It is a matter of scale. The stuff we need to let 10 people live there indefinitely perhaps only need a 10% increase to let 100 people live there.
So perhaps you mean a growing population that builds new houses/domes. Then they need the tools and factories to build the materials for that.
So we hae to scale again and send more stuff to Mars.
However that is fully in our technologi
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Then they need the tools and factories to build the materials for that.
Things wear out and chemicals are used up. If we have to continually send supplies to Mars they are not self sufficient. That polymer door seal that wears out needs to be replaced somehow. That suit that is abraded every time it leaves the hardened shelter will eventually need to be replaced. Without the ability to replace things like that on Mars an outpost will continue to be dependent on Earth. There is a big difference between Earth and Mars. On Earth, if something does not work exactly right one can ma
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Most things you mention can be made from CO2. They don't really need aluminium and rare earth materials. At least not imediatly.
Ofc, building up a permanent settlememt needs thinking. Hence my simple example. As you surely don't want to sent a real factory there (regardless for what) but the stuff to be able to set up your own manufactoring equipment.
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"You're talking *thousands* of years of continuous, error-free operation required just to reach a different star system, while protecting the incredibly fragile inhabitants inside from radiation, vacuum, starvation, disease, and self-inflicted violence."
Exactly! Which is why you want to start off with smaller beta-type projects with similar, but smaller difficulties. Mars is a great test case. Think of it as practice.
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Mars is training wheels. Same with the moon.
The fact that we're not already all over the lunar surface is just silly. It's not even about needing some massive leap in tech- we have the tech we need. What we need is the experience of actually doing it. Learning all the little problems, finding the unforeseen situations. Figuring out the tricks, the fixes, not just with machines but socially as well.
so what gives humans the right to populate that planet and
Might makes right.
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Are you sure about that?
Of course, sending an individual probe will be less expensive than each individual human ... but you have to balance that against the amount of work that each would accomplish. Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of Curiosity landing on mars. In that year, it has traveled a whopping 700 meters, and snapped a few pictures. Something a human astronaut could have accomplished in a day.
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The cost if getting a team of humans on the ground could be 1000 times the cost of sending a go cart sized rover. We could send 500 probes and still save money. Also the human could only spend a few hours per day outside in the Martian atmosphere before having to return to the radiation hardened shelter. So yes there would be one very well surveyed spot on Mars but not much more. The multiple probes could cover much more ground.
I am not saying iy will never happen but limping out there with today's technolo
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Something a human astronaut could have accomplished in a day.
So, for the sake of argument, let's say a human can do things 100 times faster. On the other hand, if sending a human also costs 100 times more money, why not just send 100 robots and let them work in parallel? It costs the same either way, and gets the same amount of work done, but the robots are a lot less likely to die, and it's a lot less traumatic and controversial if/when some of them do.
Once the robots have finished the construction of a nice research base, hotel, and spaceport on Mars, that would
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Wow are they in for a surprise (Score:2)
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Can anybody name a place on Earth that is less hospitable than the most hospitable places on the surface of Mars?
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Washington DC?
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That is only partly correct.
At the equator or middle latitudes in summer the temperature is +10 degrees and more.
In the deepest valleys of mars the air pressure is like 300 millibar, a thied of earth air pressure on sea level (because mars has 10km deep chasms, that is deeper than the height of moint Everest)
Douglas Adams would understand (Score:3)
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Nowadays, a reality show would fit the purpose just right.
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Not a colony (Score:2)
To me, a colony is a settlement that will become self sufficient through production of goods or through trade. Since transporting things back from Mars far outweighs the value anything on Mars and the fact that there will always need for parts and supplies that can not be produced on Mars I do not see that happening soon. Another issue is the size of the settlement. Since the size is dependent on the pipeline of goods from earth it will not be large for a long time. Due to size restriction and continued de
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Wrong. We do not have the technology to turn energy into matter yet. When they need a new seal for the door (or pretty much any other critical part that can wear out) it is going to come from Earth and has nothing to do with how much energy they can produce.
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To me, a colony is a settlement that will become self sufficient through production of goods or through trade.
You're welcome to define "colony" however you want, as long as you allow the rest of us to continue using the dictionary definition.
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To me, a colony is a settlement that will become self sufficient through production of goods or through trade.
You're welcome to define "colony" however you want, as long as you allow the rest of us to continue using the dictionary definition.
You're welcome to use any dictionary you like for looking up a definition, which confirms your own, as long as you allow the rest of us to point out that different definitions exist.
But the OP said "Not a colony". Even if you can find another definition of "colony" that doesn't fit what's going on here, that still does not make it "not a colony". That's now how definitions work. You can't simply find just one definition of a word that doesn't fit the circumstance and say the word doesn't fit. You need to show that all possible definitions don't fit.
As an example, the word "blow" can mean "violent application of the fist" or "a blast of wind". Given those 2 definitions, you can't say t
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The goal of most of these sorts of projects is self-sufficiency on Mars, which fits your ideal of a colony. Indeed, you'd have to have self-sufficiency, given that the nearest source of help is 2 years away at best if anything goes wrong.
Pulling this off would be the most difficult exploration or colonization effort humans had ever attempted, for precisely that reason of sheer distance. By comparison, colonizing the Americas was ridiculously easy.
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The goal may be self sufficiency but it is unattainable with current technology. There are too many parts to a habitat that can wear out and can not be produced on Mars.
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I think video of themselves is their good, and they'll trade it to us in exchange for the other things they need.
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The video will pay for less than 10% of their initial costs and none of their maintenance. There is also the fickle nature of the TV crowd. They will quickly get tired of watching the same people do the same things and have the same interactions day after day. Why do you think series like "Big Brother" have different casts each season. Swapping casts is not something viable on Mars.Another issue is that people sent to mars would be selected for their level headed attitudes and ability to live with others in
This is a society (Score:1, Flamebait)
How can any organisation with a respect for it self, decide to send humans of to something that can only be described as a suicide mission.
When will the cameras stop rolling?
Will they continue to run when people start eating each others corpses while crying for help to the camera.
Pl..pl.pl..please can't we have a rescue mission... weah, drewl, snot. nom nom nom.
What a pathetic idea.
Re:This is a ( disgrace ) to society (Score:1)
:/
Must be true, because Fox News (Score:2)
It's difficult to take TFA with much seriousness [ceasespin.org]. Laughably, the antenna are a nice touch.
Something to think about before they go... (Score:2)
The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed ...
Maybe this is something they should screen for?
I don't know if I would worry more about someone who knew the reference, or someone that never heard it before...
stop giving MarsOne attention! (Score:4, Informative)
I really wish people would stop posting MarsOne propaganda. It's a scam, pure and simple. It's been pointed out time and time again that their team is primarily artists and PR people. Just look here for yourself:
http://www.mars-one.com/en/about-mars-one/team [mars-one.com]
Of the 7 people listed there's: an artist, an editor, a communication specialist, a communications director, and an MD. There's only 2 people who could conceivably have any expertise on getting to Mars.
They did an interview (AMA) on reddit and were torn apart:
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ufb42/ama_i_am_founder_of_mars_one_sending_four_people/ [reddit.com]
STOP FEEDING THESE PEOPLE FREE PRESS!
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Mars One almost certainly a scam (Score:3)
Right on. The idea that a private, non profit enterprise can get people to Mars in ten years using privately sourced technology on a shoe string of a few billion $ is so ridiculous it is tedious to enumerate all the reasons why it is ridiculous. The gullibility of some people who self identify as intelligent nerds...
Apollo succeeded from going from one sub orbital human flight to a moon walk in about 8 years. An stupefyingly extraordinary project expeditated right on the edge of technological capability
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Mars one will not repeat this achievement. It lacks the money, the people and the technology by an enormous margin.
All you need is the right enabling technology and you can dramatically lower your mission costs. And the US government clearly has developed the necessary technology [wired.com], so it's just a matter of convincing them to share it with the Mars One folks.
writing fluff (Score:2)
'I want off the planet – I want humanity off the planet,' declared Dr. Leila Zucker, 45, who works in the emergency room at Howard University Hospital.
Isn't that much better?