Would-be Mars settlers plan one-way trip to Mars

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-space-cadets-line-one-way-mars.html
“...
More than 200,000 people from 140 countries have applied to go to Mars and never return, the group behind an ambitious venture to colonize the inhospitable red planet said Monday.
Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch engineer and entrepreneur, plans to establish a permanent base on Mars in a mission he hopes will take off in 2022 if he can find the necessary $6 billion. …
...”

I think they are all totally insane! I think the word "inhospitable" is the operative word in the above for I think they must be in a pure fantasy land and even if, by some small miracle, some make it there and finally discover what life would really be like there, I bet they will regret it!
Any such $6 billion raised for this should not be wasted on this but spend on other vastly much more useful things like reducing world poverty or doing extra solar energy research or cancer research etc. sending people to mars is a total waste of time, money and resources and will be for a very long time into the future. I think far better to wait until we have solved all the serious problems here on earth (such as world poverty ) first before even thinking about using up resources to send any more people into space let alone sending a load of insane people on virtually suicidal one-way missions to Mars!

Originally posted by humy
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-space-cadets-line-one-way-mars.html
“...
More than 200,000 people from 140 countries have applied to go to Mars and never return, the group behind an ambitious venture to colonize the [b]inhospitable red planet said Monday.
Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch engineer and entrepreneur, plans to establish a permanent base on Mars in a miss pace let alone sending a load of insane people on virtually suicidal one-way missions to Mars![/b]

I doubt very much if that job could be done for just 6 bil. My guess is more like 25 bil and counting. There are several problems to overcome, one of them being a 6 or 8 month journey only 100 million odd miles from the sun, pretty close in terms of potential radiation sources, intermittent but you could get hit with a thousand rads in a few hours if you were unlucky enough to be caught in a coronal mass blowoff. Then there would be nobody left alive a week later. End of story.

The best way to get people to mar is using something like the Vasimir ion rocket which might give you only 1/20th of a g of accel but it would be 24/7 and you get to mars in a month not 8, you accel for half the trip and decel for the last half and you arrive at Mars with relatively zero velocity.

Then there is the radiation problem 24/7 when you get there unless you live in a cave 50 feet underground. I don't think they will be living in trailers on the surface so now you have to FIND caves or dig like hell.

It might be doable but there will have to be a significant resupply schedule at least for the first few years till they can get some kind of crop growing wherever they can.

I think he is just living a pipe dream, not because it is impossible but because most money folk would call it a pig in a poke.

Nasa proved we can land 2000 pounds onto Mars with the decent cable idea so that would be upgraded to ten or 20 tons.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I doubt very much if that job could be done for just 6 bil. My guess is more like 25 bil and counting. There are several problems to overcome, one of them being a 6 or 8 month journey only 100 million odd miles from the sun, pretty close in terms of potential radiation sources, intermittent but you could get hit with a thousand rads in a few hours if you we ...[text shortened]... d 2000 pounds onto Mars with the decent cable idea so that would be upgraded to ten or 20 tons.

They'd all die lonely deaths. Unless it is possible to reactivate Mars' magnetic field then forget it. If that can be worked out we have two planets, otherwise no - you're looking at mining outposts at most and probably robotic.

Originally posted by DeepThought
They'd all die lonely deaths.

Surely only the last one would?
My biggest concern is that the internet wouldn't work very well. You could cache most of it and send it over, but anything realtime would not work.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I doubt very much if that job could be done for just 6 bil. My guess is more like 25 bil and counting.

More like $5 trillion, I'd say, with near-future technology. Minimum. Even the modest International Space Station has cost $100 billion to date.

Originally posted by Soothfast
More like $5 trillion, I'd say, with near-future technology. Minimum. Even the modest International Space Station has cost $100 billion to date.

I don't think it would be THAT expensive. After all, we have 50 odd years since the Apollo days and the newer private outfits doing space launches now are far cheaper than 20 years ago when all we had was the Shuttle.

I would think 5 tril would be more like the cost of a ride to Alpha Centauri. That would be where you have to develop something like an anti matter rocket if you want to get to something like 0.5 c or better to make a flight possible within a human lifespan. Actually, the designs are already out there, they know what to do to make an anti matter rocket but what they are presently missing is a supply of anti-matter. What is further behind is the fusion rocket. They think it would not be that difficult to make a fusion rocket because right now we are interested in getting them to be efficient enough for power generation and less radiation and so forth but in a space rocket you can make the thing maybe a mile long and screw the radiation and that might make for a powerful long lasting rocket too.

That kind of thing I think is why there would be a trillion dollar+ price tag on interstellar flight but here to Mars? Technologically a piece of cake.

The only thing is, like he said, no magnetic field on Mars means you will have to be mainly underground and that is not how people will want to live. They want to see the sky and so forth. Humy and I have speculated on ways to force a magnetic field on Mars so if WE can see how it can be done, then in a few hundred years of present scientific growth, it will probably come to pass on Mars. Just not THIS century. This whole one way trip thing strikes me as a big media circus that will go nowhere.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Surely only the last one would?
My biggest concern is that the internet wouldn't work very well. You could cache most of it and send it over, but anything realtime would not work.

My biggest concern is that the internet wouldn't work very well.

LOL. I think the internet would be the least of their problems! Survival would be their big problem! Any failure of life support there would be a death sentence. Even if their life support is made extremely reliable and never fails, I think DeepThought would be still right; they would die lonely deaths.

The whole idea of sending these fools to Mars is compete insanity if you ask me. I bet they just simply ignored the fact that the low-gravity of Mars alone would cause them serious long-term health problems including giving them brittle bones!

It would actually be vastly less insane to send lots of overenthusiastic people on a one-way trip to the middle of Antarctica to live there! -at least the gravity is right for health there and the atmosphere is breathable there so no one will run out of air so, altogether, vastly more hospitable to human life than Mars! It also wouldn't be so difficult to bring them back when the fools finally come to their senses and notice it is actually not very nice living there! Bring any back from Mars that have finally come to their senses could be problematic to say the least!

Originally posted by humy

My biggest concern is that the internet wouldn't work very well.

LOL. I think the internet would be the least of their problems! Survival would be their big problem! Any failure of life support there would be a death sentence. Even if their life support is made extremely reliable and never fails, I think DeepThought would be y back from Mars that have finally come to their senses could be problematic to say the least!

I think they would have more to worry about than the 38% gravity. That might be enough to maintain health anyway. It's microgravity of the ISS that causes trouble. If you weighed 100 Kg here on Earth you would clock in at 38 Kg there, probably enough to maintain health. The lack of magnetic field would be more of a long term problem than the low gravity, I would think. But the 6 bil figure is WAY low in any case.

For landing, they would have to use something like the landing approach of the latest probe there, Curiosity which used the cable/rocket technique. It would probably have to be upgraded to 10X the capability of the system used for Curiosity though. I would imagine any kind of human lander would weigh in at ten tons or so at least.

The fact that the curiosity probe weighs only 1 ton means some significant heavy lifting has to be done for a probe weighing at least 10 X as much. It also means multiple launchings of supply craft that would land before the humans took off. Like solar power units, tractors, housing, food, tools and the like. That would not go directly with the humans. Sounds to me like 5 or more launches before any humans go. 6 billion is a pipe dream.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I think they would have more to worry about than the 38% gravity. That might be enough to maintain health anyway. It's microgravity of the ISS that causes trouble. If you weighed 100 Kg here on Earth you would clock in at 38 Kg there, probably enough to maintain health. The lack of magnetic field would be more of a long term problem than the low gravity, I ...[text shortened]... e humans. Sounds to me like 5 or more launches before any humans go. 6 billion is a pipe dream.

I think they would have more to worry about than the 38% gravity. That might be enough to maintain health anyway.

But it might not! The fact is, we still just don't know how much gravity humans can get by with and stay healthy in the long term.

http://quantumg.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/choosing-new-home-for-humanity.html
“...
we evolved in a 1g gravity field and all the evidence we have so far indicates that we may indeed need that much gravity - particularly for having offspring. Perhaps we can get by with less, but there's no evidence for that yet.
...”

Originally posted by sonhouse
I don't think it would be THAT expensive. After all, we have 50 odd years since the Apollo days and the newer private outfits doing space launches now are far cheaper than 20 years ago when all we had was the Shuttle.

I would think 5 tril would be more like the cost of a ride to Alpha Centauri. That would be where you have to develop something like an a ...[text shortened]... S century. This whole one way trip thing strikes me as a big media circus that will go nowhere.

But I assume we're talking about building a self-sufficient human colony on Mars, not merely a round-trip mission to Mars by a few astronauts.

Originally posted by Soothfast
But I assume we're talking about building a self-sufficient human colony on Mars, not merely a round-trip mission to Mars by a few astronauts.

It for sure wouldn't be self sufficient at the start, it would have to be resupplied by continuous flow of craft delivering goods just like the delivery flights to the ISS. They don't have to be super expensive and could use the big balloon style landers ala the first rovers. My guess is it would take several years before a Mars colony could achieve anything like self sufficiency. It certainly would be helped when they find water there, that gets them water, oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for fuel after electrolysis.

Originally posted by sonhouse
It certainly would be helped when they find water there, that gets them water, oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for fuel after electrolysis.

If they had electricity for electrolysis would they need hydrogen for fuel?
If they had a self-contained habitat with stable carbon-cycle would they
need electrolysis for oxygen?

Originally posted by wolfgang59
If they had electricity for electrolysis would they need hydrogen for fuel?
If they had a self-contained habitat with stable carbon-cycle would they
need electrolysis for oxygen?

Hydrogen, the best ROCKET fuel. They would have to have rockets. Electroysis, solar assisted, gets both O2 and H2, ideal rocket fuel. Of course there will be plenty of raw materials on Mars, its a whole planet for sure.
CO2 a plenty, a source for carbon and O2. That just scratches the surface of what is available there. Iron for sure, probably aluminum, magnesium and so forth.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Hydrogen, the best ROCKET fuel. They would have to have rockets.

I thought they weren't coming back!!

But you are right they couldn't survive without TRADE and ENTREPRENERS
maybe some tourism eventually.

What could they bring back to Earth?
Gold? Uranium?
Primitive Martian Rock Carvings?
Images of Christ on fossilised trees? 😉

Originally posted by wolfgang59
If they had electricity for electrolysis would they need hydrogen for fuel?
If they had a self-contained habitat with stable carbon-cycle would they
need electrolysis for oxygen?

If they had electricity for electrolysis would they need hydrogen for fuel?

I would guess hydrogen would be pretty useless as a fuel there because there is no oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. The reason why hydrogen can be readily be used as a fuel on Earth is because it burns (or, alternatively, chemically oxidizes in a fuel cell if a fuel cell is used ) in our oxygen-rich atmosphere and the free-oxygen gas is required for that to happen but, on Mars, it wouldn't burn in the atmosphere there at all.