Let me rephrase my earlier answer. Yes. A million times yes if I was in any way eligible. Unfortunately due to multiple factors I would be VERY far down the list if eligible at all.
Let me rephrase my earlier answer. Yes. A million times yes if I was in any way eligible. Unfortunately due to multiple factors I would be VERY far down the list if eligible at all.
Heck, yeah, we should go to Mars. How else are we going to discover the Prothean ruins and Element Zero?!
failboat wrote: some sort of potential for a grand, isolated, utopia (I am elaborating here but you really dont think that eventually Mars may be some sort of exclusive place to live?)
Even if Larry Ellison could get good money for his island, living on Mars would leave him broke pretty fast.
I typically avoid missions with a zero percent chance of survival and especially when the modes of death are awful, horrible, and berkeleying horrible. Nevermind that even if you don't die en-route, or immediately upon arrival from equipment failure... you will live out your days in a small tin can with nothing to do but go stark raving mad.
I'll wait until that last paragraph looks attractive compared to my current situation before I sign any waivers.
GameboyRMH wrote: and then they'll each need hundreds in millions of resupply for the rest of their lives.
Wait... what? And why? I'm genuinely curious? As long as they have a way to produce oxygen, we have technologies available right now to be completely sustainable on the items you start with.
The ONLY issue I could see is if the important crap breaks. As stated, that is the risk you take on this mission. As also stated, the pioneers of the world are the kind of crazy that would do this. Hell, Columbus IMO had a lower survival rate, he didn't even know where the berkeley he was going! lol
Rufledt wrote: The counter argument here is that if you want to wait until X to do Y you will never do Y, because there is always another X on the horizon to make Y easier. People went to the moon with less computing power than a cell phone, because of motivation. It was out of reach when JFK said we were gonna do it, then we did it. At that time (JFK speech) people were struggling to make rockets themselves not suffer 'rapid unplanned disassembly' during flight, but beating the Soviets to the moon was too sweet to let imminent risk of death slow down the project. Right now there's not a lot of motivation, also not a lot of free money floating around.
And 3 people lost their lives in that drive and 3 others nearly did after we made it to the moon. I still believe that the advent of commercial space travel is just a setup for tradgedy.
In reply to yamaha:
At the risk of sounding cold, those are acceptable losses.
If I were chosen to go, I would be fully aware there would be a better than lightning chance the ship wouldn't make it out of the atmosphere.
When you take on a mission like that, you accept a certain level of risk. Systems fail. People make mistakes. Things go wrong. People die. It's unfortunate, but not a tragedy. You pick up the pieces, figure out what happened, and try to make sure it doesn't happen again. You learn and move on.
HiTempguy wrote:GameboyRMH wrote: and then they'll each need hundreds in millions of resupply for the rest of their lives.Wait... what? And why? I'm genuinely curious? As long as they have a way to produce oxygen, we have technologies available right now to be completely sustainable on the items you start with.
Even assuming they can make all the water and food they need - they'll need equipment they can't make and that's where a lot of the resupply comes in. Again, I'm assuming that the astronaut dying when they run out of whatever spares they landed with is not acceptable.
Part of the assumption for a plan like this is technology and quantities of scale will improve over time, thus reducing the cost of each trip.
As a commercial venture, I would also assume the goal of being there would not be to simply survive, but to explore and look for resources to export and ultimately (over a number of years) make the venture profitable.
GameboyRMH wrote:HiTempguy wrote:Even assuming they can make all the water and food they need - they'll need equipment they can't make and that's where a lot of the resupply comes in. Again, I'm assuming that the astronaut dying when they run out of whatever spares they landed with is not acceptable.GameboyRMH wrote: and then they'll each need hundreds in millions of resupply for the rest of their lives.Wait... what? And why? I'm genuinely curious? As long as they have a way to produce oxygen, we have technologies available right now to be completely sustainable on the items you start with.
The big cost of getting supplies up there is the launch. With Space-x's Falcon Giant they are looking at a big enough payload to amortize down the cost of launches per / lb of cargo to the point getting supplies or equipment up there is going to drop fast.
Do I think there will be a colony or permanently manned station on Mar's by the end of the 2020's? No, but I do think Musk and Space-X will have a person (I'd almost be the first foot down will be a woman) within 20 years? Hell yes. For that I'm really glad. I was just over 3 months old when Apollo II landed on the moon so my recollection of that is a bit fuzzy, but I'm delighted we will probably be landing on Mars in my life time. Something I'd given up hope on until the last year or so.
To the OP's question, would I sign up for a one way ticket to the history books? NO, hell NO, triple hell no and no thank you. Would I sign up for a dirty weekend in an earth orbiting space hotel with my wife then back home to bore my friends with my holiday snaps (out the porthole only!)? Once it's down to the cost of a nice foreign vacation with 5 years 100% safety record, then yes, oh yes please.
P.S. Space X have had the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9 (versions 1 and 2) and are working on the Falcon heavy. Please please Eon, let’s have the Millennium Falcon next, and if George Lucas objects to the naming he will go down as the world’s official douche bag.
In reply to Ian F:
I get that, but I just have the feeling these private initiatives are going to have the same if not worse occurances.
We all die, its just a question of how and when.
Would I? Currently, probably not. I love my fiance and the prospect of having a family too much. If I could take her with me, I am not sure if it is noble to throw a child into that situation without their choice.
Otherwise, I would seriously consider it. I hold it as a high value to make my life meaningful. I think exploration and the advance of human knowledge and science is the most noble thing that a person could lay their life down for. (certainly better than some religion, which seems a popular excuse in some parts of the world.) It would take serious thought. I do like to think that I would consider sacrificing myself for the betterment of mankind.
I think it is a great idea.. but. I do not like people as it is, no way I am getting stuck with a very small cross section of the population for the rest of my life.
yamaha wrote: In reply to Ian F: I get that, but I just have the feeling these private initiatives are going to have the same if not worse occurances.
I don't really agree. The technology to reliably get people into space is fairly well established. Now the trick will be to figure out how to do it affordably for paying customers. Customers dieing is bad for business (I've seen it take pharma companies down). Most astronauts are/were ex-military; they are trained to accept a certain level of life-threatening risk. Most civilians (save race car drivers) are not. The private companies have it in their best interest to have live passengers arrive, although I'm certain there will be failures - it comes with the territory.
To put it bluntly, human space travel is still in the crawling stages. Going to the Moon was a first attempt at standing. Going to Mars is an attempt to walk. We need to expect a bloody knee or two.
Ian F wrote: In reply to yamaha: At the risk of sounding cold, those are acceptable losses. If I were chosen to go, I would be fully aware there would be a better than lightning chance the ship wouldn't make it out of the atmosphere. When you take on a mission like that, you accept a certain level of risk. Systems fail. People make mistakes. Things go wrong. People die. It's unfortunate, but not a tragedy. You pick up the pieces, figure out what happened, and try to make sure it doesn't happen again. You learn and move on.
Agreed, it's the cost of exploration/expansion. It has happened EVERY time someone makes a leap forward. Crossing the Atlantic by sail boat killed people, and it still does. People don't stop using boats because of it. Figuring out airplanes killed people, too, and people still die in planes. Figuring out how to ride a horse probably got at least one guy with a hoof rammed through his face, but it still happened. People die racing, and racing is an optional use of a transportation technology, but it still happens. When those people died, it was tragic, but there was always someone else willing to take the risk. In the case of the 3 guys who died during the Apollo missions (or preparation, more accurately), the 3 who took their places knew them personally, and went for it anyway. You might call them a bit nuts, but they succeeded on the knowledge gained from the deaths of those before them.
GameboyRMH wrote:HiTempguy wrote:Even assuming they can make all the water and food they need - they'll need equipment they can't make and that's where a lot of the resupply comes in. Again, I'm assuming that the astronaut dying when they run out of whatever spares they landed with is not acceptable.GameboyRMH wrote: and then they'll each need hundreds in millions of resupply for the rest of their lives.Wait... what? And why? I'm genuinely curious? As long as they have a way to produce oxygen, we have technologies available right now to be completely sustainable on the items you start with.
I'll respond at first saying I doubt mars one will ever make it off the ground. However, their plan is to make resources there. I've already mentioned the sub-surface water (and dry ice if they want to make a club soda) and they also plan to take plants (grown with grow lamps, not the sun) and some animals (insects) for protein. Along with that, since they won't just plop down a food producing farm instantly, they plan to take enough supplies (water and food and so on) to make it a few years (until the next supply) even if they are completely incapable of creating any amount of their own food supply.
Ian F wrote: Part of the assumption for a plan like this is technology and quantities of scale will improve over time, thus reducing the cost of each trip. As a commercial venture, I would also assume the goal of being there would not be to simply survive, but to explore and look for resources to export and ultimately (over a number of years) make the venture profitable.
Mars One is a non-profit, they plan to fund it with some kind of media coverage after they get enough donations to kick start things a bit. The technology they plan to use is currently available, or at least is known to soon be available in the case of the Falcon Heavy rocket. That hasn't flown yet, but the rocket it's based off from (the falcon 9) has, so it's not unreasonable to think it'll end up working in the next few years. Some commercial satellites already have launch contracts for it.
Some companies area looking for a profit, for example SpaceX wants to capitalize on transportation. Eventually, they want to make some kind of earth-mars space-liner kind of thing. That makes sense I guess since if things catch on, people will want a way to get there. The companies looking to mine resources have some weird legal things to work out first, like how nobody on earth is allowed to own a celestial body.
yamaha wrote: In reply to Ian F: I get that, but I just have the feeling these private initiatives are going to have the same if not worse occurances.
There aren't any commercial companies -yet- sending people into space so there is no hard data either way, but the existing commercial ones have a better launch success rate than government groups. Sure, Nasa and russian-nasa had to figure it out first, so they had a few extra problems, but even then nasa suffered repeated 'institutional issues' (read- someone did something stupid) causing the loss of 2 shuttles. The first one on launch, the second on re-entry because of damage from launch. both problems were mentioned before the problem occurred, but someone higher up said "nah, it'll be fine." Even the original 3 apollo deaths were considered at part caused by someone being stupid, cutting corners building the thing and so on. I think ULA (boeing and lockheed's previous monopoly company on national defense launches) Hasn't lost a contracted launch yet. A couple ended up in unusual orbits, but nothing blew up. Same for SpaceX, only one occurance where a secondary payload ended up in a different orbit than intended when an engin didnt restart.
Both of them had a couple test rockets blow up (last friday for spacex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qv2VEX9iyI) but nasa had FAR more. again, they were figuring it out first, so thats probably not an accurate comparison. i'm just trying to say dont assume corporations would let people die. not until GM makes rockets 
I remember reading about some French dude who came over to the gulf coast area way back, like the 1700's. The leader burnt the ships so they couldn't return, and after it started to look like a bad idea, the French dude started walking north. He worked his way up the continent, generally heading northeasterly, and walked into Montreal, onto a ship and back to France 7 or 8 years later. He was the only survivor of the settlement.
He always had the option of going home, no matter how difficult. Signing up to go someplace where you are just going to die is lunacy.
I agree. Absolutely crazy to know you can't go back. I'm not signing up. They have thousands of applications, though, so I guess the lunacy isn't enough to keep people from volunteering. I don't just mean "yeah, i'll go" but actually going through the effort to send applications.
Just think- 99.9% of the people volunteering will end up staying here with us, and we now know how crazy they are
Id only go once SpaceX has their return shuttle thing figured out, and a few hundred people have gotten their safely.
We know a lot more about Mars than early explorers did of the "New World".
In reply to iceracer:
We know more about Mars than our own ocean......
All of a sudden, space isn't friendly. All of a sudden, it's a place where people can die. . . . Many more people are going to die. But we can't explore space if the requirement is that there be no casualties; we can't do anything if the requirement is that there be no casualties.
— Isaac Asimov
Of course risk is part of spaceflight. We accept some of that to achieve greater goals in exploration and find out more about ourselves and the universe.
— Lisa Nowak, STS-121 astronaut
If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.
— Virgil 'Gus' Grissom, astronaut
A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are for.
— John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic
yamaha wrote:Rufledt wrote: The counter argument here is that if you want to wait until X to do Y you will never do Y, because there is always another X on the horizon to make Y easier. People went to the moon with less computing power than a cell phone, because of motivation. It was out of reach when JFK said we were gonna do it, then we did it. At that time (JFK speech) people were struggling to make rockets themselves not suffer 'rapid unplanned disassembly' during flight, but beating the Soviets to the moon was too sweet to let imminent risk of death slow down the project. Right now there's not a lot of motivation, also not a lot of free money floating around.And 3 people lost their lives in that drive and 3 others nearly did after we made it to the moon. I still believe that the advent of commercial space travel is just a setup for tradgedy.
To be fair the first three died in a test on the pad, which they all predicted would go horribly wrong and fought tooth and nail to prevent. As predicted, it turned out lining the interior of a spacecraft with velcro, using a 100% oxygen environment, and giving the people inside suits made of flammable melty synthetics is a bad idea.
Here they are expressing their concerns.
Though I totally agree on the commercial aspect, every astronaut death in the US space program can be directly linked to management not making realistic demands, the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger disaster, Columbia burning on reentry, all of them the upper guys ignoring the engineers and astronauts. Now imagine what happens when at the same time, those people are trying to turn a profit.
Or to put it better, from Appendix F of the Rogers Commission Report.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -R. P. Feynman
BTW, Virgil "Gus" Grissom Is the guy in the middle.
Kenny_McCormic wrote: Or to put it better, from Appendix F of the Rogers Commission Report. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -R. P. Feynman
It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?"
--R. P. Feynman, Rogers Commission Report
I'd go. If you look at things in the big picture we quite literally have ALL of our eggs in one basket. One decent asteroid strike and we go the way of the dinosaurs. Spreading out humanity is our only way to guarantee species survival.
Even if we discount any threat from cataclysmic disaster, with 7.X BILLION humans scrabbling around for a diminishing pool of resources. We either need to get busy reducing that number or figuring out a way to go get more stuff to satiate the ever growing hive of skin sacks cluttering up the landscape.
KyAllroad wrote: Even if we discount any threat from cataclysmic disaster, with 7.X BILLION humans scrabbling around for a diminishing pool of resources. We either need to get busy reducing that number or figuring out a way to go get more stuff to satiate the ever growing hive of skin sacks cluttering up the landscape.
This is another thing that is a good long-term goal but we can't do anything about without Star Trek-level technology. Whether space colonies need literally everything or just the occasional small piece of high-tech equipment sent from Earth, if Earth goes down humanity goes down. Doesn't matter if we're just here or on every body in the solar system you can stick a tin can full of people on.
Asteroid defense is a good thing to work on right now with gains that could pay off immediately.
You'll need to log in to post.
