One-Way Flight to Mars? A Soldier Volunteers

I don’t think it’s worth it for several reasons. First, you would end up turning religious fundamentalists and the ‘pro-life’ movement against NASA. They would paint this as a voluntary, state-sponsored suicide. Terri Schiavo was a country pumpkin juding contest compared the circus this could become.
Secondly, robots can do the job until man is ready to go in 30+ years. Now, if it was a one way suicide mission to a planet in another solar system that might have life? Maybe I’d support that but the potential gain from a mars mission doesnt seem worth an explicit suicide.

Hell yeah I’ll go, where do I sign up. I’ll be the country boy to go with the 101st.

Hey, good point, Steve. If you died on Mars, your body would not decompose. Then, when the next round of explorers come along, they can re-animate you (because we’ll obviously have the technology to reliably place people in suspended animation and revive them by then). So, you wouldn’t really be dying, you’d just be giving up living for a while.

Yes, mankind is where it is from people chancing death to make great discoveries. How do you think we know that hemlock is poisonous? Or that lettuce can be safely eaten? Somebody tried it and everybody else learned.
These people are heroes that take that chance willingly. If they draft people to do it then I would see where the activists would have a stand.

But the atmosphere alone doesn’t make a person decompose, Bob, does it? Isn’t it the microscopic organisms and such that do the decomposing? Perhaps we should send a little airtight cocoon along with the lucky devil to crawl into just in case.

I think everyone can agree that in order for the human species to carry on we need to get off this rock. The sun will eventually burn up the earth and kill everything on it. We need to find other sutable planets to colonize or change to suit our needs. This is one in many steps that need to start happing

I’m glad to see the spirit that made humans populate all the planet is still alive.
It’s been almost 200 years since humanity became a couch potato, sacrificing the colonization instinct (yes, INSTINCT) for the sake of safety and comfort.
Now, with Earth turning into an overpopulated wasteland and most resources almost depleted, the pioneering drive will probably wake up again. The more uncomfortable we are anywhere, the more willing we are to go somewhere else.
As for me… if offered the chance, I would think about it a while and discuss it with my wife. But I would bet that if it seems technically sound, we would go.

The Lindbergh analogy is silly. Lindbergh probably would NOT have flown to France if he thought there was no chance of returning, and most of us would probably agree that France would be at least a marginally better place to be stuck for life than on Mars.

i think we should send a criminal or some other social piria…why deprive ourselves of a good person when we could be getting rid of a bad person?

Having reread the original, it doesn’t look like McLane nor Atkinson is saying this is a suicide mission. It is just a one-way trip. Otherwise every immigrant to any country would be committing suicide. Under this scenario the first person there would just be the first immigrant. The best thing to do is not send one person but many (6+?, include geologists, biologists and engineers) and have enough equipment to build shelters and green houses to raise food. Assuming there is sufficient water there it may only be necessary to send (preplace) enough supplies for a few years. Once a functioning colony is in place then there will be lots of reasons to go and lots of people wanting to go. Then the money will show up to develop the means to leave the surface. By the way I think just about all the technology needed to do this is available now. It’s just a matter of building what is needed.

Does Mars have a strong enough magnetic core to hold an atmosphere and maintain the conditions necessary to terraform it?

Our astronauts came back from the moon using computors with the power of a cheap calculator. I would think we could go to mars and back if we really wished to do so…

too much radiation, they die

This is still all bogus. We need to work out cheaper methods of getting into orbit. Expending a huge amount of money to send one guy to walk around on an icey desert for a little while isn’t going to make starting a colony there any easier. Even sending a team isn’t going to do much unless you can send enough equipment for them to be self sufficient. That really would cost a fortune. It’s much better to focus on building platforms in orbit around earth first. Build up an infrastructure, then start sending humans to Mars. Until then robots will get along a lot better. Mars is dead and empty. It won’t have any value until we can bring earth resources to it in bulk.

This issue again? No matter if there are volunteers, it’s a stupid mission to begin with. What will we gain by sending someone on an one-way trip with no means for long term survival or to come home? Just glory? Just to get a person’s name in the history books as the first to land on Mars only to die on Mars? Many people in the world will not be motivated to go to Mars if the explorer ends up dead.
Yes, I understand exploration always have its risks, but in space, there is no means for survival if something goes wrong.
I like the notion of human beings leaving our homeworld and venturing out there. Just I like to see people enabling to get back home.

If we stop destroying our plant this would not be an issue.

Oneway mission? Stunt. I agree with all who have commented that if we don’t develop life support systems that can sustain us off this world, we’re all going to die. Not maybe. Not we’ll see. Not perhaps. We’re in a raft(Earth) with finite resources, floating in the middle if the pacific(space), and you continue to add one survivor a day to the raft. You do the math. The first effects are starting to really show up now. So unless we change how we live entirely (highly unlikely without a major war), space is our only salvation. Arthur C Clark knew it, Einstein knew it, Hawking knows it. All this not in the next 500 years but within this century.
Our mind set has to change. To do that we either have it out (war) or we transpose at least parts of humanity abroad in our solar system thus becoming (hopefully) an inspiration to the monkeys back on Earth.

I remember back in high school in the late 80′s, NASA had sent packets to us students asking how we would colonize Mars. Why would they do that? I still have the certificate they sent back after student participation.

I get tired of all the humanistic claptrap. Can we realy save ourselves from the human condition? I don’t think so. Is running off to another planet realy going to do it? Hardly, rebellion against the Creator only brings us closer to judgement. It is just like the tower of Babel. They thought they were better than God and tried to show it by building a tower. Today we build rockets to go to other planets and ignore the very Creator who made us. We prop up scientific theories based on pseudoscience and mock God. We talk about saving the planet when we need our souls saved by faith in Jesus Christ. I am an advocate of space exploration, but when we turn it into a new religion, which mocks the real Creator, I find it sickening.

How about focusing on our “not very well” mother earth ? Just another ego-maniac idea from the powers that “soon will not be”. Waste of money, time and life.
If they are a looking for an escape route from their self made black hole, try looking within…
It’s not rocket science.
Adam (mother natures son)…

Jordan – “Huh? Are you equating exploration and colonization as rebelling against ‘the creator’?”
There is nothing wrong with space exploration in and of itself. The problem is the humanistic dogma attached to it. Somehow we are going to save mankind! The reason we have problems on earth is the hearts of men and women. Even if we do colonize the planets we will have wars, famine, sickness, death, fighting, anger, adultry, and all the other sins we see today. Providing additional resources by traveling to other planets will not remove the sickness of our hearts.
Jordan G. – “Religious fanaticism is what’s going to bring us closer to judgement not expanding our territory and opening up technical possibilities which will benefit mankind.”
The term “religious fanaticism” is thrown around very loosely these days. It realy depends on what philosophical belief system is correct. Is a Humanistic Naturalism correct? Is Judaism correct or how about Christianity? Is Islam correct or Buddhism? How about some other religion. Logically, not every religion or belief system can be true. I do believe there is a religious fanaticism of the type where people blow themselves up for some religious cause, but to discribe all religions as fanaticism I think is unfair. Also, to propagate Humanistic Naturalism as the only choice is equally wrong. The notion that one is either a Humanistic Naturalist or a “religious fanatic” is also wrong.
Obviously, I am a Christian from my comments. Saving your soul is only good if Christianity is true, otherwise it is a grand lie. I have never seen anything in the Bible that was problematic nor anything that seemed to be a lie. You do need to believe in God and His supernatural power, though.
So I would not mind leading a group to Mars just like the early pilgrims did – for religious liberty and to further Christianity. Interestingly, I posed this question to a bunch of pastors one time. They seemed to be against it – too expensive.

Eric said, “Providing additional resources by traveling to other planets will not remove the sickness of our hearts.”
I never said it would. I’m talking about the survival of the species not our souls. Of course we’ll still be baboons to each other. But if we’re spread we’ll be less likely to destroy ourselves.
Eric said, “The term “religious fanaticism” is thrown around very loosely these days.”
I include personification of religious deities that will rain destruction on mankind for rebelling against said deities’ will.
But this conversation is diverging badly. Another discussion for another forum. Sorry folks!

“There is not a “hint” of danger in going to Mars with no return vessel. The person who takes that trip will certainly die. That said, it’s a worthy cause. Send Scott Peterson.”
##Everyone dies… its how they choose to live that matters