One-Way Mission to Mars!

truthprevails

I think we should keep an eye on NASA and space developments because they can give us an idea of what plans there are in store for Earth. I personally don't like the idea of billions being spent on Mars (and generally space research) instead of being spent on Earth...

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"Hundred-Year Starship" Would Send Space Explorers On One-Way Mission To Mars

"The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds," NASA Ames Research Center director Simon Worden said at the Long Conversation talk in San Francisco, according to Kurzweil AI.

With that goal in mind, writes PopSci, NASA and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are embarking on a "Hundred-Year Starship" program, which will bring space travelers to other planets and leave them there.

The first planet in sight? It may be Mars.

Worden expects the program to take off within the next two decades. "I think we'll be on the moons of Mars by 2030 or so," Worden said, according to Kurzweil AI.

So far, NASA has contributed $100,000 to the project, and DARPA has chipped in $1 million, according to Gear Log. That isn't nearly enough for blast-off, but Worden hopes to convince additional individuals to invest.

"[Google co-founder] Larry [Page] asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, 'Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?' So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price," Worden said.

NASA has few details on the program. The Huffington Post has contacted the organization for a comment regarding the initiative.

How feasible is a colony on Mars?

As PopSci points out, in the October-November edition of the Journal of Cosmology, a paper titled "To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars" explains that Mars's similarities to Earth make it an ideal site for human exploration and, possibly, settlement.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, who co-authored the paper, argue that a one-way mission is favorable for two reasons. First, writes Science Daily, "because the greatest portion of the expense is tied up in safely returning the crew and spacecraft to earth." The second reason is that leaving people on Mars could lead to "long-term human colonization of the planet."

In their paper, Schulze-Makuch and Davis compared potential settlers of a Martian colony to the first Europeans who explored uncharted North America, Science Daily reports. They predict that a Martian settlement could be could be extremely useful to researchers and may even serve as a "lifeboat" in case a "mega-catastrophe" occurs on Earth.

Buzz Aldrin argued "we can be well on our way to Mars by July 20, 2019" and believes in building a colony on Mars. He told Vanity Fair, "I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?"

Andrea

This is totally ridiculous. I agree with you truthprevails that the money needs to be spent on the Earth - maybe try and fix what's wrong with our planet instead of trying to visit another one??!? And I don't even really believe those billions are ACTUALLY being spent on what NASA says they're being spent on...I think sophisticated weapons in space (aimed at the Earth) is far more likely what the money is being spent on but of course they can't say that...so they say, we're going to Mars years and years from now! And how on Earth (haha) could Mars be a lifeboat if a disaster happened on Earth?? Only a chosen few would be able to go there and it certainly wouldn't be you or I. And even if NASA is actually going to send someone to Mars (unlikely), who wants to live in a domed world where you can't go outside and if something happens to that dome then it's game over. And how ridiculous is it to say "I think we'll be on the moons of Mars by 2030 or so" - you go all the way to Mars just to land on their two tiny little lumpy moons?

Sometimes I wish I was a kid again - hearing about NASA going to Mars would be so exciting!

MJonmind

This is just hype IMO, and never going to happen, just fun for some to dream about. Money is always going to be spent on things that seem exciting and inspire the world. However if they're talking about colonizing Mars because Earth is over-populated, that is ridiculous. If you look at GoogleEarth you will see most of the land area is devoid of settlement. Much easier than Mars' harsh cold, lack of oxygen, lack of water--basic needs of all life, is Earth--developing there--houses with all necessary resourses such as greenhouses-- inside the mountainous areas, under the shallow ocean areas, under the desert areas, inside the artic areas. This planet could easily sustain triple the population (20-30 billion) with scientists, engineers, architects, etc. putting their heads together and NASA billions of dollars together. I'm not saying people shouldn't try to reduce family size to keep earth's population at it's current amount, but I'm saying how the worst areas on earth such as mountains, deserts, ocean, and artic are by far more hospitible (50 X) and conceivable for inhabiting than Mars. Period.