Over at Wired, Adam Mann has a history of them, from von Braun to present. None of them are going to come to fruition until we get costs down, and stop wasting money on big rockets.
22 thoughts on “Manned Mars Plans”
Comments are closed.
Over at Wired, Adam Mann has a history of them, from von Braun to present. None of them are going to come to fruition until we get costs down, and stop wasting money on big rockets.
Comments are closed.
There are still plenty of ideas out there, ranging from the extremely ambitious — such as Elon Musk’s desire to fly to the Red Planet in the next two decades – to the completely bizarre – like the MarsOne reality-show/one-way-suicide-mission combo.
There is a major difference between MarsOne and all other plans. They rely on soon to be existing hardware from existing companies. They expect it will cost $6b over ten years. Bizarre is a slander. I would like to see some tweaks to their plan (it relies too much on redundant systems that may still break down) but nobody else comes close to a real plan that is now, today, currently being implemented.
Sending four people every 26 months after ten years of training is too few but that’s more than anybody else is doing. Sending them one way is not a suicide mission, unless it’s like the atomic bombing of Japan in which they are still talking about casualties to this day. Send them one way means they will die on mars. Does that make everybody living on earth part of an earth suicide mission?
SpaceX hardware is prominent in the MarsOne plan. So he’s slandering Musk as well.
Send people on a mission wherein they are required to die is called a “suicide mission”.
If you want to argue it isn’t a suicide mission, you need to argue that [i]it isn’t a mission[/i]. Good luck with that.
Everyone dies of old age. Doing it on Mars doesn’t make it suicide any more than dying of old age on Earth is.
How is that relevant to whether or not it is apt to describe it as a “suicide mission”?
There’s two simple questions:
1) is it a mission?
2) are the crew expected to give their life on the mission?
If so, it’s a “suicide mission”. Suicide has nothing to do with it.. the pilots asked to give their lives to attack Germany in WWII weren’t committing suicide, but they were still given suicide missions.
As 2 is a given, the only question is whether or not we’re talking about a mission here or not. I think we’re not and that’s a good thing.
How is that relevant
Trent, I’m sorry, but you are diminishing the meaning of suicide mission. A suicide mission is defined by the level of risk. For example, smoking shortens your life, but doing so is not considered a suicide mission. If someone is expected to live to around 70 but does an activity at 30 that shortens their life to 60… that is not a suicide mission.
Now, taking unnecessary risks could qualify something as a suicide mission. I think relying on life support that can not be easily repaired is a mistake no matter how wonderful those systems are. This is why I say focus on gaslight technology to live on mars. They can be trained to repair that using local resources rather than having to get resupply from earth if both their life support Dragons break down.
Now you’re just being ridiculous.
The term “suicide mission” commonly refers to a task which is so dangerous for the people involved that they are not expected to survive.
If you are given the task to deliver supplies to a base near Baghdad with insufficiently armored vehicles or very little ammunition, you would be right to call it a suicide mission.
If you then choose to take the mission anyway, you are not committing suicide. Suicide missions have nothing to do with suicide.
Similarly, if you’re asked to go to Mars with only enough supplies for 3 years and no way to get back, you’d be right to call that a suicide mission. Your expectation is that you will not survive the mission.
It has nothing to do with whether the risks are necessary or unnecessary. In our example, there simply may be no armored vehicles available to take the supplies to the base and no other route than the one going past Baghdad. There may be a shortage of ammunition. If it is necessary that the supplies get delivered, then it is a necessary risk to do so with the vehicles available. This does not change the fact that you would be right to consider it a suicide mission.
Now, answer the damn question: are we talking about a mission to Mars or not? If so, what kind of mission is this?
Why are the crews going on this mission? What’s their motivation? As far as I’m aware, the crews of Mars One are to be volunteers. Isn’t that what we do when we unfortunately have to send people on a suicide mission? Ask for volunteers?
Send people on a mission wherein they are required to die is called a “suicide mission”.
If you want to argue it isn’t a suicide mission, you need to argue that it isn’t a mission. Good luck with that.
The MarsOne proposal is not a mission, it’s a move. As in “I am moving to Mars, I’m not coming back, I will die there”.
Agreed. Helping people voluntarily “relocate to Mars” sounds a lot more ethical.
If you send your parents to a retirement community in Florida, is that a “suicide mission”?
How about the negative? If you don’t, would you be committing a S.M.?
You may also like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z7eGV3A2gw
Ken, I think it’s MarsOne’s source of funding that drives the “bizarre” word usage, not the technical merits. What happens to the Martians if the show flops and can’t sell advertising?
That’s a good point Brock. So, you need $6b, not from government. How do you do it?
If you think some of the public will get behind it, you have to get the public involved. I don’t know if you can get $6b, but they seem willing to take money from anyplace they can get it… but first you need to make the need known. I forget the guy, but he offered NASA one billion dollars for a mars program (they asked him for two.) Let him know about MarsOne and NASA may not be the best bang for his buck.
I think if they stay pragmatic as they have on the technical specifications, they may have a shot at doing it, even if a long shot. Who else is coming close to that effort?
(Staring at this white screen and having posts fail is annoying. I hope you get this fixed Rand… I assume you know this has been an on going problem for quite a while now.)
Heh, that might immediately make the show more interesting, sort of a self-regulating system…
By the way Trent describes it Edward, that would be murder by sending them on a suicide mission.
You’re smarter than this Trent. A dangerous mission is not a suicide mission. A lifetime move to another planet is not a suicide mission. Kamikazes and vest bombers are on suicide missions. Twisting words cheapens the meanings.
There’s your fundamental problem: Kamikazes and vest bombers are not on suicide missions! They’re on kamikaze missions or suicide bombing missions.
“Suicide mission” is the term used for a mission with little expectation of survival. Note that Kamikazes and vest bombers have no expectation of survival!
It’s been really fun having a semantic argument with you clowns but if you don’t mind, I’d rather leave you to argue this out amongst yourselves….. f*ckin’ Americans.
You’ve got to quit being so shy Trent and tell us what you really think!
So a mission where you actually commit suicide is not within the definition of a suicide mission??? Uh… Well… Ok. I can kind of see that being a useful definition. I’m just not sure it’s accurate or all encompassing.
Twisting words cheapens the meanings.
That’s the bottom line. Well said John.
Trent, of course it can be described as a mission. I am a bit astounded that you say a suicide mission has nothing to do with suicide?!
I think this is your core argument…
if you’re asked to go to Mars with only enough supplies for 3 years and no way to get back, you’d be right to call that a suicide mission.
If not coming back were the criteria, then ALL colonization would be suicide missions. That is clearly ridiculous.
Second they are not going to mars ‘with only 3 years of supplies.’ They are going with supplies that may allow them to make the transition from supply from earth to local supply. Although I agree they are not putting enough focus on living off the land.
Frankly, if they don’t give more focus to local resources it could be a suicide mission. So I undercut my argument, but it doesn’t have to be such. They need to understand and implement a variation of my gaslight argument for long term survival. We will have ten years to persuade them if their project gets off the ground.
By persuade, I do not mean change the mission as designed but add to it by training their volunteers in technology they can do themselves, by hand, once on mars. This is why I describe the martian right stuff as being able to make tractors out of dirt. The MarsOne project seems to rely on habitats from earth. I believe they must make their own caves of large shirt sleeve environments so they have room to grow even larger. This implies many more than just four people added every few years.
Mars is going to be one huge maker faire for the colonists.
The people describing Mars One as a suicide mission are actually talking about the mission the Mars One people have described, not your concepts.
I don’t think it’s conclusive that the actual mission is or isn’t. But you are correct that I believe it needs modifications to be less so.
I just think it’s sad that the only mission out there; which will have time for developing improvements… is described in just an unjust manner.
It has a great potential to not be bizarre or suicidal and I affirm that it is unjust to characterize it as such.
Which is not to say they won’t kill off a few or all of their colonists.