You, yes, YOU, can go to Mars. It's a one way trip though.

They can use the poop for, um... campfires. And then Matt Damon can come along and tell the Martian colonists about Ranger policy.

I wouldn't say "completely," I merely said I thought it was doable. Once the ship is on a free return trajectory, it will visit Mars and return to Earth...regardless of what goes on with the people inside it.

Note one of my worries:

This is not a small concern. Many--I daresay almost all--people would crack up being confined to a small space for a duration of many months. It's been a concern since the dawn of the Space Age, when mission durations were measured in days, not YEARS.

A pioneering Mars colonist on a one-way trip is going to live under very constrained conditions...for the rest of his/her life, potentially DECADES. I think most people--no matter how committed to the mission they were--would inevitably suffer some kind of mental breakdown under those conditions.

As long as I could bring up my hard drive full of stuff to watch, I'd probably be fine for a trip, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Paladin's got a point. You're looking at a nearly two year journey just to get to Mars. I've seen people get stir crazy on a deployment that was only two MONTHS long without anything worth calling a port visit (unless the refueling stop-over in Okinawa counts) I don't think that ship had ever had so many people on restriction at one time to that point when we pulled into port.

Appriciate the sentiment of a private industry investing in space travel, but...um, no.

Plus, being in zero gravity (I assume gravity plating technology doesn't exist yet) for two years straight is gonna fuck up people's body strength by a lot. IIRC, Mars's gravity is not much stronger than ours, so even if no one will be taking hikes on Olympus Mons....yeeeeeeah...

People have been going on expeditions long before Mars and the result will be the same. Those who cannot handle it will not sign up (or sign up and die), and those can will be talked about as legends in future stories

"Getcha ahss to Mozz."

As I understand it, the training for the folks going will last years, if not a decade or more. I'd assume part of that training would be some kind of long-term biosphere simulation to see who's going to go stir crazy.

Yeah, that's a problem. Or more accurately, a challenge.

Point of contention: You will not [flash-]freeze in space. As I mentioned in another thread, it's possible to cold-shirt (ie, no protective gear) from say airlock-to-airlock, though the survival window is very small. And, if you cold shirt without any gear and a nearby star is within view, you're gonna roast because of a lack of UV protection.

Within atmosphere, freezing becomes more of a concern, because suddenly, your body heat radiation has somewhere to go: The air. Heat doesn't dissipate in vacuum very well at all, and it's actually a big concern for space vehicles. That could lead well into your unsaid point about the stowaway.

I forgot about this one, lol. That's like NASA sending out the Rovers with no way for them to send back the data they're gathering.

Suspension of disbelief for the sake of story?

I wonder if such a ship wouldn't be equipped with an elaborate VR tech of some sort in order to mitigate the "stir crazy" factor. At least some of which, one assumes, would involve physical exercise in order to access the program (i.e. a "virtual jog" on a treadmill or whatever).

A one way trip to Mars would be from 6-9 months.

I wouldn't worry about going "stir crazy". Thousands of submariners have been confined in not dissimilar conditions for 60-90 days during the Cold War. And Dr. Robert Zubrin has already addressed the issue of rotating the spacecraft to generate the equivalent of Mars gravity during a long mission.

My wife and I agreed that if we had an opportunity we would go. Both of us having aging parents so they aren't going to live that long, and though we would miss many friends (hers) and extended family, even on Mars people can be communicated with only a 40 minute delay so its not like you will never talk to loved ones again.

Unfortunately, both of us have long term, chronic medical conditions that would preclude both of us from long spaceflights.

Yeah, that's what disqualifies you.

Actually Mars's gravity is about 38% that of Earth's.

Hey, you know why there are no Irish astronauts?

Life on Mars agrees! Seriously though, a virtual Gretchen Mol should be standard equipment.

ConfederateSon disagrees: The person would run out of O2 and food in short order and then die.



Idiot. You don't think they would plan for that?

And you're not going to run out of oxygen on Mars. It's all over the place. You just need to pull it out from where it's at.

Six months.

Gravity can be generated on the way to Mars by spinning the space craft.

The idea is dumb.

However we can set up a colony on Mars. In fact we must in order to expand. I think that within the next couple hundred years if we are not on Mars the human race is going to start falling backwards towards extinction.

And yes the first settlers will have a hard time of it. First settlers always have a hard time. But as the colony grows things will get easier.

I just signed up my ex-wife!

Wow what a coincidence......

I just signed you up.......

Both of your ex wives are major hot if your pictures are accurate.

So that is hardly a disincentive for anyone.

If I signed up, I would do so on the assumption that the technology was on the way and that it would in fact not be a one way trip. I'd figure 10 to 15 years until return became a possibility. However, I also figure I'd be all Citizen Kane at that point, and would likely refuse to return.

Actually the whole thing makes no sense since we already have the technology to come back.

One just, yes I'm beating a dead horse again, has to read the book that Zubrin wrote: The Case For Mars. He details how to do it. It's not hard at all with our current technology level.

Yes we do have the technology to get off Mars and back to Earth. In fact this show would be better off turning it into a round trip to Mars.

The difference is this: if you wanted to be a pioneer in the past, you took your family, a few essentials, and maybe a horse or two and headed off into the wilderness. You bore the entire cost and, if you died, oh well.

To put a single person on the surface of Mars is going to cost, at a minimum, a billion dollars. That level of investment is incompatible with the "Let's just give it a shot and see how it goes" philosophy.

Simulations and recreations won't change the fact that you are locked up in a confined space and will have to remain there for YEARS, even if you're not talking about a one-way trip.

You're going to be in a similar environment once you get there. On a one-way trip to Mars, you're looking at living in confined spaces FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

First, stays aboard submarines are temporary; 60-90 days is not the rest of your life. Second, submarine living--though confined--is more comfortable. Third, unless you're opreating in the Midnight Funeral Space Corps, most spacecraft are going to be FAR smaller than a typical submarine and, unless someone invents a way to transport a huge habitat to Mars, the shelter at the "colony" will be, too.

Trust me -- they're not!

Where are these pictures of which Dayton speaks?

Two weeks ago I'd have signed up Chad in a heartbeat!

FTFY

Yeah, forget that shit.

Last I heard, gun violence was practically non-existent on Mars!

Nope. Nope. Nope. From the Gemini program onward, US astronauts have been doing EVAs. This means that they've been outside in space, grabbing hold of things which are exposed to the wild temperature swings of space. If the object's in the sun, its going to be really fucking hot, if its in the shade, its going to be really fucking cold. Period. Paragraph. Not one of the Apollo astronauts ever complained about feeling how hot or how cold something was on the surface of the Moon. By default, your gloves are going to be designed to protect you from the temps outside. They have to be. To think that the technology which can handle the wild extremes of space would somehow be lost between the Apollo-era and when humans land on Mars in 2100 is, to put it bluntly, fucking stupid. Not to mention, the colonists weren't the first people on Mars! There'd already been one manned mission to Mars prior to this. Don't you think when the guys got back from it they would have said, "Hey, folks, our gloves suck! Any time we touched the ground, the cold came right through them." if that had happened?

Yup. And that's a minor fuck up in the book on KSR's part.

[Spiderman] Tell him, Peter![/Spiderman]
[Peter Griffin] Uh, yeah, everybody gets one.[/Peter Griffin]

One of those things is allowable, put to pile on, as KSR does, innumerable things which are stretching things, violates common sense. I'm not even going to get into his half-baked political ideas, which fans seem to think are some kind of Great Revelation, but in fact, are, quite literally, pointless babbling with no kind of definite conclusion at all. (Martian society will take the best elements of all Earthly societies! And those elements would be? ) Its a shitty series of books which is popular because people don't understand the actual science involved with spaceflight. One day, they'll be laughed at, like Verne's idea of sending people to the Moon using a giant cannon. Assuming anyone still remembers KSR when humans walk on Mars.

"She's got a ticket to Mars......she's got a ticket to Mar-r-ars...
she's got a ticket to Mars - and she don't care!"