"Mars for Nothing"?

[Belisarius]

Actually, I think I've already given my .0000002 cents..

You gave nothing like a real opinion until challenged, then you gave a coherent and well-reasoned view.

You wouldn't sign up for anything that would involve the risk - no, the certainty - of death. I understand that. In fact, that's the sensible opinion. 99.9% of people are in agreement with you. Can you sympathise with people who would give their lives to experience something completely, absolutely new?

What is it like to step on another planet?

 

[Ghostrider]

Actually, I would sign up for something that involves risk of death. I wouldn't sign for anything that involves certainty of death. And since one's life is one's to live, anybody is entitled to risk it at their own leisure.

If someone wants to embark on a suicide mission to Mars, OK. Good for them, good for me. Not good for the people who have to assist the guy on the way up and out, unless they're Cybermen.

 

[Robert van der Veeke]

IMHO, the problem is not the volunteer. It's the rest of the team. Could you sit down at the CAPCOM console (no, not the Commando one) and talk for weeks to an end to someone you know will not come back, ever? Could one sustain the emotional pressure to keep watching over someone you know is going to his/her own death, willingly, and you can't change that fact no matter what? As humans, can we bear this kind of ordeal? The person in the ship is going out there to die, and not only there's nothing we can do - we're accessories to this person's death. That's the real question here, if you can find a team who would be mentally and emotionally fit to oversee the mission.

It will be more like years if everything goes to plan, and I don't think that it would be a very big problem, the man (or woman) is there for a mission that goes beyond just being there.

And when he/she finally dies we will cry and weep, we will mourn and be depressed, yet we also done something that goes way beyond living out your ordinary life here on earth.

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here ...

That's thing you should ask yourself, not the things that can go wrong, but the things that work out just right and what we can do. We will know that dead is comming in his own time. And I would be there at the end and yes we will cry, people will call it a waste of time, of effort, resource, money, but oh.... how wrong they are.

 

[Belisarius]

And when he/she finally dies we will cry and weep, we will mourn and be depressed, yet we also done something that goes way beyond living out your ordinary life here on earth.
That's thing you should ask yourself, not the things that can go wrong, but the things that work out just right and what we can do. We will know that dead is comming in his own time. And I would be there at the end and yes we will cry, people will call it a waste of time, of effort, resource, money, but oh.... how wrong they are.

A little anecdote... I was wandering through the University of London one day when I found myself face to face with the preserved corpse of Jeremy Bentham, one of the founders of the university and of humanist ethical philosophy. There he was, just as he wished, in a glass case with a little smile on his face and a big tan hat. That guy, dead for 250 years, with his little knowing smile, taught me more about the correct attitude to death than a stack of bibles as high as a steeple.

I'll repeat my earlier quote from Baxter, since some people seem not to want to understand what it means...

"She was standing freely on Mars... She turned. Sunlight shone into her face,casting reflections from the surfaces of her faceplate. Sunrise on Mars: the sky here was different, the way the light was scattered by the dust..."

 

[Hartmann]

No sense in send a one way manned mars mission without samples return.

 

[Belisarius]

No sense in send a one way manned mars mission without samples return.

What if the samples are fully analysed by our explorer?

 

[Ghostrider]

I was wandering through the University of London one day when I found myself face to face with the preserved corpse of Jeremy Bentham

Remember, he must go back to the Island, too.

 

[Belisarius]

Remember, he must go back to the Island, too.

Sorry, don't follow.

By the way, I found a nice quote on the kind of awe that this mission might arouse in people and make it all right for the people of Earth to watch it develop, and whereby it might not just be a ghoulish deathwatch, as Andy says...

"I was thinking back on the sacramental nature of The Mission, when we were kids. It was the Mass transformed, with the television as the altar and our Revell models the chalices of a celebration of the High Frontier. Dave and I would sit in front of the television, following along with the high priests, Cronkite and Clarke, solemnly moving the models to mimic the action in translunar space..."

Who wrote this poetical stuff? None other than our dear old Greg Burch, from his website at

http://www.gregburch.net/writing/apollo13.htm

Couldn't we get that back? Or is it just too late to have a transcendent adventure again?

BTW, a little photo of my long-dead pal Bentham in his "Auto-Icon" box

 

[Hartmann]

What if the samples are fully analysed by our explorer?

it can be done but in this case you need a full equipped lab , and could be impossible do a full study in mars, (equipment, scientists, microscopes,biological research...)

also it can be heavy and expensive, so it could be better bring the samples to hearth(very expensive too)

 

[Ghostrider]

Sorry, don't follow.

LOST reference, dude.

 

[Belisarius]

it can be done but in this case you need a full equipped lab , and could be impossible do a full study in mars, (equipment, scientists, microscopes,biological research...)

also it can be heavy and expensive, so it could be better bring the samples to hearth(very expensive too)

Maybe a sample return launcher with 20-30kg payload could be dropped to our colonist in one of the resupply flights by bouncer. Then he loads it up with the most interesting samples and launches it.

But maybe this whole thing isn't so much about science as about adventure, heroism, awe, wonder... all the stuff that's gone missing in the 21st century.

 

[Andy44]

If you're going to go to all this trouble to send supply ships, sample returners. etc., just send a crew return ship and bring the poor guy home. I'm with the poster who said that this thing borders on the immoral for those who work on the project, and if you think I'm being too extreme, that's nothing compared to the general public outrage over such a plan that would ensue. This whole thing is a non-starter.

As for all this awe about stepping onto another planet, sure it's cool, but let's not get carried away. In the end it's a giant ball of rock and dirt. Being the first to get there is an accomplishment among your human peers, but the planet doesn't care about you and doesn't have much to offer a lone man after the novelty wears off and you realize that you'll never see another color again besides red, orange, and yellow-brown, and you can never again breathe fresh air in a cool sea breeze.

 

[Belisarius]

If you're going to go to all this trouble to send supply ships, sample returners. etc., just send a crew return ship and bring the poor guy home. I'm with the poster who said that this thing borders on the immoral for those who work on the project, and if you think I'm being too extreme, that's nothing compared to the general public outrage over such a plan that would ensue. This whole thing is a non-starter.

Sure, you're right, it would be wonderful to develop a nice new ERV which generates its own fuel and all that. But how long would that take?

I don't think you're being extreme about your judgement, and I'm sure you're right that there would be public outrage, etc. That's why this kind of thing would only be possible with a private backer.

Guess what kind of sci-fi story I'm working on?

 

[JamesG]

I wouldn't sign for anything that involves certainty of death.

Everyone dies sometime...

I'm sure any governmental support for a one way trip is out of the question. Far to many layers of far to many problems to even waste the time contemplating it.

However, it is entirely plausible for an eccentric billionaire to forgo trying to take over the world and would simply try to "get away from it all" in a dramatic fashion.

National space agencies are horribly inefficient with time and money. They are far to busy getting everything signed in triplicate, dotting their eyes, crossing their tees, and basically covering their bureaucratic asses, that its as likely that a upstart private venture reaches Mars before a government does.

I think its possible to be able to put together a craft and launch it for a tenth of what NASA or ESA does. With the ease of knowledge access through the internet, the wide spread and cheap availability of rapid, precision engineering and fabrication, hardware can be built up much faster than possible before. Reach an agreement with a nation that has aerospace aspirations, (Brazil, India, Israel, Iran, etc.) for an assembly and launch site.

I'm sure the project and journey will be a media circus, that is hard to avoid these days. But it CAN be portrayed as something other than as a ghoulish spectacle of watching someone travel to their demise. It would be worthy of doing even discounting the vanity of the historical entry that it would earn. The trip could render alot of good data and even lessons about surviving in space that will have to be learned the hard way, no matter who it is. Better to send a single "canary in a coal mine" than an entire crew of the planet's best and brightest.

 

[eveningsky339]

I'm with andy44. Send a fully-fueled ERV ahead of the Soyuz, as in Mars For Less. It will cost more money, but a human life is always more valuable than green pieces of paper with dead people's faces on them.

 

[Usonian]

Your ideal volunteer would have to be ... suffering from a non-debilitating fatal disease.

I can't resist commenting - Doesn't this describe every human being ever born? (In as much as every human being must die sometime.)

Lots of folks have left their "home world" to live and die in the Americas or Africa or Australia with no thought of ever returning home. Techincal difficulties aside, doing it alone seems to be the deal breaker.

 

[Andy44]

Lots of folks have left their "home world" to live and die in the Americas or Africa or Australia with no thought of ever returning home. Techincal difficulties aside, doing it alone seems to be the deal breaker.

Again, not the same thing. Those people were colonists, who brought their families along and tried to make a new life for themselves, and sustain themselves in their new environment. We're talking about a guy who wants to go to a place like Antarctica and sit in a tent waiting for the next parachute supply drop until he finally freezes to death, all alone, with no family or settlement established, just so he can be the first one there and send back a few cell phone pictures. Even if we forget the moral implications, it's a waste of time and money with no lasting consequences. Getting investment backing for this would be a challenge to say the least.

 

[JamesG]

Not all of the colonists were homesteaders bringing their whole families along for the adventure. In fact most of the first generation of North American colonists, at Jamestown etc, were "gentlemen adventurers" there to make a quick buck. They were businessmen or the sons of nobility who had the financing to make the journey, but pitifully few practical skills for living in a wilderness and they died in droves.

 

[Usonian]

Again, not the same thing. Those people were colonists.....

Like I said, doing it alone is the deal breaker.

Going to Mars with no prospect of returning to Earth, but doing it with other people as a colonzing effort, makes some sense. As with all colonizing efforts, one of the goals would be to establish a self-sustaining, self-perpetuating community. (Not much different from what we all do here on Earth. As a real colonizing effort, how different would the one-way trip to Mars be from the "one-way trip" we are all taking here on Earth?)

On the other hand, if the object of going to Mars in a group is just to have company while everyone sits on their haunches waiting for the next supply pod to drop, then the one-way trip amounts to little more than an expensive group suicide. It would have to be privately financed -- and it would need a Jim Jones to lead it up.

As for sending back cell phone pictures, I wonder how many "bars" Verizon would get me while standing on Olympus Mons. Might have to step outside the aluminized mylar bio-tent to get reception.

 

[Eagle]

What we need are a few missions to demonstrate insitu resources.

I foresee the need for 2 missions. First would be sample return where the return craft makes its own fuel. The second would be a small biodome full of gerbils or something, that would survive for a few months. (order not necessarily important)

Once its demonstrated that it CAN be done, people will go for it...maybe, well not many people would go if there's no guarantee that they can survive without supply drops.