One-Way ticket to Live on Mars - What kind of people will go? POLL

Free (one-way) Trip to Mars - Your ideas about the opportunity and people involved

  • Historic Space exploration Opportunity - Fame in History books

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • Great opportunity to dedicate self to science and humanity

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Discovery is courageous and deadly - much to be learned for humanity

    Votes: 5 71.4%
  • Unrealistic hardship - a modern Donner Party for the History book

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • A waste of money and resources for opportunist and fools

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Misguided Death Sentence - but some people thrill seek anyway

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Why not the Moon, it might lead to an actual useful settlement

    Votes: 3 42.9%
  • This should be stopped for the safety of all involved

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It will provide amusement, perhaps morbid or emotional - go for it

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • If they would take me, I would really go - will tell you why below

    Votes: 1 14.3%

  • Total voters
    7
  • Poll closed .
Asteroid Mining feasibility study from 1950's by US Steel.
Before space was nationalized in the 1960's, there was an earnest effort for business to go to the Asteroid belt and retrieve one in orbit. Not to catch one falling out of orbit.
It was feasible by using an Atomic Rocket Engine.
Basically, it is a kitchen table sized rocket engine with a narrow hole that has a super-heated ring (Atomic heated) that super expands hydrogen gas passed through it.

The efficiency is far beyond the German designed V2 style Chemical rockets used today.
Number 1 is the huge payloads and Number 2 is the lengthy sustained burn that could propel to speeds many times faster.
The problem was that the US Industry would have quickly surpassed anything the USSR economy could have produced. This was a threat to the USSR that like the West had nervous fingers on the launch buttons of war. So, President JFK banned nuke space travel and private industry and gave us NASA instead.
Without going into all the details, the nuke rocket is back for the us military under test. Like the movie "back to the future" they are testing out this very safe and simple effective design.
In theory, once in space the engine could maintain a constant acceleration of 25 feet per second per second until half way through the trip, then turn around and slow down at the same rate. This would basically provide artificial gravity.
More important, it has the effect of shortening the trip by the square root.
The Asteroid would be fit with atomic rockets and slowly navigated back to Earth / Moon Lagrange point. Or, basically the Earth and Moon would rotate around the Asteroid.

Trying to catch a speeding asteroid passing through the inner orbit would be impossible for exactly the reasons brought up. Recently, it appears that outside the Asteroid Belt, there is a Comet Belt.
 
Ok then, thanks for clarifying.

YYYEEEEEHAAAAAA!
Whhhoooooo NELLIE!!!!!
 
If we ever want to survive for long periods of time as a species outside the Earth, I mean lifetimes, we have to start someplace. I think it's a great idea provided the plans are up to par with necessities. I know they plan to grow and cultivate their own food eventually. Just think, as it grows, it can become it's own economy, government, etc...

Eventually, we should have space stations throughout space with full colonies of people in the style of Star Trek. This is the perfect start.
 
If we ever want to survive for long periods of time as a species outside the Earth, I mean lifetimes, we have to start someplace. I think it's a great idea provided the plans are up to par with necessities. I know they plan to grow and cultivate their own food eventually. Just think, as it grows, it can become it's own economy, government, etc...

Eventually, we should have space stations throughout space with full colonies of people in the style of Star Trek. This is the perfect start.

This.

If we don't find a way to move on to another solar system at some point, then humanity will die. Long before the sun novas and becomes a red giant, its luminosity will have increased to the point that Earth's surface will be far too hot to be habitable. If we are still here as that time approaches, we will die along with every other living thing on Earth.

Yes, call me an optimist, but I really would like to see humanity still around a billion years from now. Personally, I think we'll be lucky to still be here 200 years from now, but a guy can hope.
 
Let's imagine for a moment that there are countless other civilizations in other galaxies - as has sometimes been proposed. Suppose the greatest of these are all on a sort of a council.
Yeah - just like Star Trek (and I can't mention Star Trek without noting, very sadly, that Leonard Nimoy aka Spock died today at the age of 83).
Anyway - this council finds fertile worlds and plants the seeds of life there. They know that the world will have a few billion years and then the sun will go kablooey like Frothy just said. And long before it goes kablooey, the world will no longer support life.
So what if, as a sort of a "test" by this council they have planted the seeds of life and then leave the world to its own devices. Evolution happens. Intelligent species MAY form. If they do, they MAY advance enough, scientifically politically, economically, and culturally to develop the means to leave that world before it becomes lifeless, and perpetuate the species. If all this is true (a longshot, I admit) then it's up to us Earthlings to get to Mars at least, and sustain a society there, and continue to advance, until we really develop intergalactic travel and can join this council.
If not, bye bye Charlie, and hello Spock.
But if we can survive long enough to do it - that would really be something.
I wonder if you get the secret password and a decoder ring and all that.
 
Also, if we ever learned to fly to the stars, we could finally come up with an answer for the Fermi Paradox.
 
Libre - If you've not read it, I highly recommend reading the Asimov short story "The Last Question". It's not precisely related to this trip to Mars, but it does touch on life and the universe, and has a very interesting ending.
 
Also, it's interesting to know that the sun will eventually become a red giant, with a diameter so vast it will extend out past Earth. And from that, it will further evolve into a tiny white dwarf as the fuel in its core gradually depletes.
 
I've already seen people with "proof" that it's all a Hollywood-produced fake created by the New World Order for some nefarious purposes, and that all the volunteers are paid actors.

And on a totally unrelated note, sometimes I think I need new friends.

A good one, my grandfather believed up until the day he died that man did never get to the moon but rather it was staged somewhere out west. Hollywood was not big back then. Never could convince him otherwise.

Blade
 
We won't ever know what will happen until they get there.

It would be hilarious if they went there to die and then when they ran out of oxygen they went outside and it turns out Mars was inhabitable after all.

EDIT: Before anyone claims in 2020 they predicted it to be inhabitable, You guys can vouch for me that I did it first! ;)
Plot twist! :D


Interesting. There is a movie from a long time ago where we crashed on Mars with only one survivor and a monkey. (spider monkey I think) He was running out of O2 and low and behold a person appear with a little pill that made him breath the Martian atmosphere. It seems that an alien life form had brought these people to mars to mine the minerals there and this one escaped. Never did understand but the monkey did not have to have a pill to breath. Guess Hollywood forgot about him.

Blade
 
Libre - If you've not read it, I highly recommend reading the Asimov short story "The Last Question". It's not precisely related to this trip to Mars, but it does touch on life and the universe, and has a very interesting ending.
Thanks for the link Froth.
I just read it.
Almost replicating an idea in the story, as I was reading it, I recalled that my sister told me a version of this story, when I was a small child. My sister has long since passed. She must have read this herself to have told it to me. This was in the late '50s I guess. I see the date on the story was about 1956.
 

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