Mars One's Red Planet foray is still on – but not until 2018 Mars One, the not-for-profit foundation dedicated to establishing a human colony on Mars, won't be able to launch its first mission to the Red Planet until later than originally planned. In an announcement issued on Tuesday, the group said it now expects to send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2018, rather than in 2016 as it …
I can just about believe that there are enough prurient saddos on Earth to fund landing a bunch of fools adventurers on Mars through sponsorship, reality TV and advertising. But WTF is going to happen to those poor bastards when interest back here wanes, and the money for the necessary endless succession of re-supply ships stops rolling in?
You ask, "[What] is going to happen to those poor bastards when [...] the necessary endless succession of re-supply ships stops rolling in?"
That's entirely the point of establishing pilot Mars colonies: that they become self-sustaining. The intent is that the need for constant resupply reduces to the point of occasional shipments providing things like medical supplies, raw materials not easily available on Mars (many can be scavenged from the lander) and extending the equipment manifest to improve autonomy.
Much of the current research and mission design is targeted around what is needed to achieve this.
That's a nice idea, but beyond the most basic raw materials, anything required for a level of existence further advanced than the Stone Age is going to have to come from Earth for a hell of a long time. Nobody's even attempted this kind of self-sufficiency on Earth since we lived in caves, so why just assume that it'll be possible in the much harsher environment on Mars?
Nobody's even attempted this kind of self-sufficiency on Earth since we lived in caves
Humans colonised almost an entire planet, including diverse and very inhospitible areas, with only stone-age knowledge. We are very very good at colonising. So Mars should be do-able.
I suppose you're thinking along the lines of Apollo 13 where nobody wants to watch anymore? If they really get people living on Mars, I think you can bet the project will attract more serious attention.
Plus, even if/when attention wanes, I reckon the first colony will still attract a lot of TV viewers around the globe. Even another moon landing would get a lot of interest.
Delighted to see Surrey Satellite as the TV relay partner - a great bunch of people.
The proposed water collection and purification experiment may possibly be the most important ever done on Mars. We can learn all we can about whether there's some form of primitive or microbial life now, or in the past, but these tests will tell us the most profoundly relevant fact of all: can humans survive there?
Mars' surface temp is typically -55 C. / -67 F., per Wikipedia. Air pressure is 0.6% (that is, less than 1%) of earth's. So, prospective colonists may want to condition themselves by living on Mt. Everest, whose air pressure is a bountiful 30% of that at sea level. The temperature at 8,000m (about 26,000 ft.) is a balmy -27 C. / -16.6 F. They might want to perfect their agricultural and manufacturing skills there while they wait for their spaceship to be constructed. As a first step, a pilot project that makes Biosphere 2 in Arizona truly self-sufficient seems to be in order.
I'm confident this will never happen. In fact, if 'Mars One' ever does happen, and people really do 'get their ass to mars', I pledge to re-watch 'Total Recall'. Only the 1990 one though : they'd have to do a lot more impressive stuff than just living on another planet for me to watch the shite, non-mars based 2012 version again.
If I said to my wife I'd like to watch a program where real people are travelling to and then setting up a colony on Mars I'd get the "well you can watch that shit upstairs" treatment.
If my wife said to me "Joey and Shauna slept together and now Dale's pissed. Mars One is the best reality TV show ever" I'd tell ask if I was allowed to watch TV upstairs.
This would be one reality TV show I would want to watch, 4 people sent to another planet, with no hope of return? it sounds like the perfect set up for a horror, I REALLY hope that all cams are available uncensored, I want to hear the screaming matches, see the fights, watch the mass orgy after they get drunk on moonshine...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
