400 Unqualified Schmucks Sign Up For One-Way Mission to Mars

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, I think the problem here is that people just don't realize how unlikely something like this is to even be CLOSE to working. We aren't just shipping them to Mars and they'll live there in cramped tanks for the next 20 years. We are much more likely sending them to die either in space when they screw something up there, on landing when they crash and burn, or at best shortly thereafter when something, ANYTHING, unexpected happens. It'd be like throwing an egg off of niagra falls and hoping it hatches into a chicken.

 

[Blaster395]

They will proberbly send up the 10 of them with the best skills, and just put the other 390 in a fake version of the spaceship and haul em off to a desert for a reality TV show.

 

[Wrists]

Ten to one odds it burns up before ever hitting the troposphere,

Doesn't the troposphere extend down to the ground?

OT: Seems like a bad idea, but possibly a decent film, maybe a little bit like Moon. They could call it Mars. Everyone killing each other seems likely but if they manage to make it to the point where all but one has died naturally, you just know that sorry buggers going to jump out of a window and suffocate.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Progress demands sacrifice?

To be fair, if people have volunteered for a one way trip to Mars then why exactly is this a problem? It's not like the company proposing this wouldn't spend 5-6 years training these colonists for the rigours of space flight and colonisation.

Not only that but any trip to Mars would likely be a one way trip because the Earth orbits the Sun at a rate faster than conventional rocketry.

To get back to Earth you'd have to wait 2 years (I think), launch your rocket, and 'meet' the Earth on it's orbital path. So any trip to Mars is going to likely be a one way trip as who-know-what structural integrity damage and other system problems will arise between launch, reaching the destination, cold storage of propulsion system in Martian orbit for 2 years ....

You're better off just sending a whole flet of colonising vessels and calling it quits ... hope the casualty rates are significantly low enough that permanent structures can be built and maintained for further colonisation.

Possibly even beable to create some technical base on Mars that can create a means to eventually create two way travel between the planets.

 

[Therumancer]

I don't see this happening until we see a world unity. Also while we're not to the point of colonizing Mars, we are at a point where we can build an outpost there, and that's what this is actually about. Sticking a few people there to see how well they do and gather information before we committ to something like a full fledged colony.

That said, I don't think there would ever be much of a problem finding volunteers, as a result should recruiting ever happen I think NASA will have a substantial pool of people to pick from, and will doubtlessly only select the best and healthiest people they can get.

Being underqualified doesn't really matter all that much here though, because in the end the only people actually qualified to do something like this are already astronauts. It's likely we'd have to train people going anyway,

Given that it's a one way trip I'd imagine the requirements are going to be to get people as young as possible, like 18 years old in the US, meaning they might very well be recruiting them as young as 12-14 years old. The difficulty here being that anyone young enough to go is going to have their whole life ahead of them, as opposed to a jaded, middle aged person who has comparitively less to lose. What's more I'd imagine anyone going would also need to be chemically castrated. Your going to want both men and women on the mission in order to see the affects on the slightly differant biology, but at the same time you don't want to risk the complications of pregnancy or childbirth in a situation like that.

Truthfully China or Russia probably have an advantage in setting something like this up because their relatively lax human rights standards means they can probably pick pools of children based on capabilities (prodigies and the like) and then pretty much put them through training and select the ones they want without "no, I don't want to" being a valid answer. Although I'd imagine this would only come up if they are the ones unifying the globe.

In the end deciding who goes is going to be a big deal if it ever happens, and the people going are doubtlessly going to be young enough for it to be a sacrifice.

 

[Sacman]

This is going to end badly...<.<

 

[D Moness]

Anyone else think this would be an awesome premise for an RPG?

Either that or stick in a mass murderer and you have the plot for the worst scifi movie i have ever read.

And i write fanfiction >.<

 

[SovietSecrets]

Bet they won't even make it to Mars.

 

[poiuppx]

...screw it. I'm in. Someone has to go up, and honestly, the more diverse the skillsets and backgrounds are, probably the better. For all the folks laughing about this, fine, enjoy the laughter. But if we manage to get up there and colonize another planet for the first time in human history, sooner rather than later we could end up with one badass future.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Um, no. Pass. Big time pass. I've seen too many movies and read too many books to have even the slightest urge to be one of the first colonizers of ANYTHING. So many horrible things, some worse than death. Yeah...when Mars is stable and able to support millions of people without a problem, then I'll be interested. Since I'll probably be long dead before then, no real worry for me.

 

[Josh123914]

400 Unqualified Schmucks Sign Up For One-Way Mission to Mars

Hundreds of grossly unqualified volunteers have signed up for a proposed one-way trip to Mars as part of a cost-effective private industry effort to colonize the planet.

Douglas Adams [http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Galaxy-Deluxe-Anniversary/dp/1400052939/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294697505&sr=1-2] fans will recall that one of the three sapient forms of life on this planet actually descended from the Golgafrinchans, who eons ago decided to tidy up their society a bit by tricking the most useless one-third of the population - hairdressers, insurance salesmen, management consultants, telephone sanitizers and the like - to board a great colonist spaceship which was then hurled out into space and eventually crash-landed on Earth. Now, believe it or not, a group of like-minded citizens is hoping to recreate the journey, except this time they want to make it happen in real life.

Getting to Mars is a relatively simple gig. Getting home is something else entirely. Any team that makes the journey to the red planet will have to take everything it needs for the return trip with it and that's just not practical. One simple yet radical solution is detailed in the November 2010 Journal of Cosmology [http://journalofcosmology.com/Contents12.html]: what goes to Mars, stays on Mars, people included. It's the ultimate suicide mission, yet it's also an idea that a lot of people with dodgy skillsets say they find very attractive.

"I've had a deep desire to explore the universe ever since I was a child and understood what a rocket was," Peter Greaves, a jack-of-all-trades who started his own motorcycle dispatch company and fixes computers and engines on the side, told FoxNews.com [http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/10/space-volunteer-way-mission-mars/]. "I envision life on Mars to be stunning, frightening, lonely, quite cramped and busy. Unlike Earth I wouldn't be able to sit by a stream or take in the view of nature's wonder, or hug a friend, or breath deeply the sweet smell of fresh air - but my experience would be so different from all six to seven billion human beings... that in itself would make up for the things I left behind."

"As the human race continues to expand, it only make sense to explore opportunities for human life out in the cosmos," added Reverend Paul Gregersen, pastor at the Clarno Zion United Methodist Church. "Also, I have the feeling that spiritual issues would come up among the crew. The early explorers on Earth always took clergy with them."

Astronaut psychology expert Albert Harrison said he wouldn't be surprised if a future mission to Mars included someone to serve as a chaplain but pointed out that going there wouldn't actually be the exciting and romantic journey that some enthusiasts might think. "Each day will be pretty much like the rest. The environment, once the novelty wears off, is likely to be deadly boring," he said. "Despite being well prepared and fully equipped there are certain to be unanticipated problems that cannot be remedied. One by one the crew will get old, sick, and die off."

Journal of Cosmology editor Lana Tao said she initially thought the responses to the proposed mission were a joke but as the emails continued to roll in, she realized they were sincere. Among the serious (and seriously under-qualified) volunteers was 69-year-old computer programmer Pasha Rostov, who wrote, "I do VERY well with solitude. I am handy with tools, very good at making things work, have generated my own solar energy, built three houses (with my own hands) and am quite sane and stable. And I am ready to go to Mars. Sign me up."

For the record, the one-way trip to Mars won't be launching anytime soon; the Journal of Cosmology estimated it would be 20 years before a privately-funded mission could get off the ground.

via: Slashdot [http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/01/10/1753246/Mars-Journal-Issue-Inspires-Hundreds-of-One-Way-Trip-Volunteers]


Permalink

Oh for fuck's sake Andy Chalk I'm not meaning to be rude or anything but I literally had a thread about going to Mars less than 6 HOURS AGO, I know I'm probably strolling down Probabation Lane with this comment but this is Plagiarism!!!!111!eleven!

 

[DazBurger]

Hell.. If they really really want to.. Send em away!.. Just don't give them means to send back messages to tell us how bad it is there and demand rescue.


It might even give valuable data on how to do it right the next time!

 

[Josh123914]

EDIT : double post 'Facepalm'

 

[CardinalPiggles]

id go, im a schmuck. where do i sign...

 

[Mike Laserbeam]

Crap... What if they do manage to populate Mars? That's an entire planet led by mentalists... (Not in the Simon Baker sense)
What's more, they'd be religious and moronic, I don't think a crusade against Martians is a good idea... Look what happened to Israel...
They're going to ruin Mars for us! GODDAMNIT!


Crap... That started ironic but I don't think it ended that way...

... the only thing moronic is the idea that all religious people are bloodthirsty and would crusade against aliens. Nothing wrong with religious people except the extremists. Learn the difference.

Oh that was a joke, I'm sorry

 

[emeraldrafael]

Snip

yeah, I forget how far up it is off hand though.

Snip

you ever seen a plane? You need a licensed and practiced and trained person to lift off, its one of the few things a computer cant do. I'm pretty sure a shuttle is going to work the same. Also, this is clearly saying its one way. If you send something up there to retrieve, people are going ot want to come back.

Snip

That seems like the only people who would do that/able to afford the visit in the beginning the insanely rich, and thats something you wouldnt always do. And besides, wouldnt you have ot worry about meteor strikes and what not? and doesnt the space station orbit around the earth, so the elevator would be torn away when the space station tried to move.

Then again, I could be wrong.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

Well, that's pretty much how England colonized Virginia. A private sompany sent a bunch of schmucks there hoping that they would eventually get something out of it.

 

[RabbidKuriboh]

ho no the human race perhaps dropping by 500! how will we ever go on?

i say give them their rocket and while we're at it pile on all the worlds republicans and just fire it into the sun

 

[Caliostro]

Totally unqualified people, banding together for a likely suicide mission.

This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've read all day.

Seriously? Cause it sounds like the best thing ever to me.

Worst case scenario, we get rid of a few people that willingly volunteered for a suicide mission.

Best case scenario, we get rid of a few people that willingly volunteered for a suicide mission, get the first good reality show AND initiate off world colonization.

So it's win-triple win. I'm not seeing the downside here...?

 

[Baldr]

As long as I'm not in Ship B, I would go in heartbeat.