Would you move to Mars permanently? (http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/06/would-you-move-to-mars-permanently.html)

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/images/content/101885main_C91_08781_516x387.jpg

A Dutch company has launched a reality television-type project to establish a human settlement on Mars by 2023.

Mars One, as the project is called, aims to bring a total of 40 astronauts to Mars between 2023 and 2033. Organizers say the astronauts will be expected to remain there permanently - "living and working on Mars the rest of their lives."

As the first humans ever to set foot on Mars, they will conduct experiments and explore it, providing "invaluable scientific and social knowledge" with those back on Earth.

Their lives will be streamed online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

(CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/06/would-you-move-to-mars-permanently.html))

What do you think? Will this get off the ground? (pun intended)

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I went to Mars with Bradbury when I was a teenager. No interest in returning.

I went to Mars with Bradbury when I was a teenager. No interest in returning.

Mars is heaven!

I went there and forgot who I was.... "If I'm not me, then who am I?":lmao:

I really like the Mars Bars, although at times things can get a bit nutty.

Very far away. Very hard and slow to get any supplies to. No magnetic field or van Allen belts to protect from Solar Flares and Cosmic radiation. Very thin atmosphere also has minimal protection. Very cold almost everywhere, and the occasional dust storm at very high speeds.


Man, and I thought I knew alot about Mars. Apparently not, because I didn't know that. But yeah, you're right. According to what I've read quickly on the internet, Mars doesn't have a flow of molten metals in the planet's core to create a dynamo effect, which creates a magnetic field.

The info I read says you could live underground to avoid the solar radiation (solar wind), but who wants to live underground a good deal of the time. Or you could wear a suit to block the radiation.

Yeah it sound like Mars needs alot of work.

As much as mars is interesting, I think robots are a better way to explore it than sending people. Similarly with the Jovian moons, at least to start. But I think the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are much more likely to provide us with exciting and potentially valuable discoveries within our solar system (not to mention the asteroid belt, which has a whole planet worth of harvestable resources waiting for us to exploit; and with no environmental impact at all!).

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Would you move to Mars permanently? (http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/06/would-you-move-to-mars-permanently.html)

(CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/06/would-you-move-to-mars-permanently.html))

What do you think? Will this get off the ground? (pun intended)

Never. You couldn't pay me enough... If you threatened to kill all my loved ones and friends if I didn't' then I would go and sacrifice myself for their salvation, otherwise forgetaboutit... Thanks but no thanks.

I think some people should do it. No matter how ridiculous and insurmountable the task.. This is what humans excel at, this is where we shine, this is what inspires us to be better.

Stay on earth until we clean ourselves up? Recipe for extinction lol, we'll never be fully enlightened peace loving as a race, but we're Damn capable of doing extraordinary things that a majority of people think are impossible or wasteful, and our humanity was always enriched as a result.

I don't know if technology is up to it yet, heck the legal paperwork that will be needed will probably be overbearing...

But it should be attempted.

Because it's there. Calling for us. And it's what humans do...

Until an Apple Store opens there, it's a no-go for me...

Until an Apple Store opens there, it's a no-go for me...
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Man's spirit of adventure would seem to ensure there will be those who go, without question.

Never. You couldn't pay me enough... If you threatened to kill all my loved ones and friends if I didn't' then I would go and sacrifice myself for their salvation, otherwise forgetaboutit... Thanks but no thanks.

Your willingness to sacrifice yourself for your family is both commendable, and fundamentally the reason people will eventually go. The universe is holding us all hostage, and all our loved ones and friends will die if we don't learn how to colonize other worlds. Not only is there a gun to our heads, the trigger has already been pulled; it's just going to take a while for the bullet to get here, so we have time to move.

If we take better care of the planet we've got, we'll have much longer to find ways of getting to and living on other worlds, but ultimately that is what we will have to do. Probably not this generation, and maybe not the next, but eventually this is our only hope.

Your willingness to sacrifice yourself for your family is both commendable, and fundamentally the reason people will eventually go. The universe is holding us all hostage, and all our loved ones and friends will die if we don't learn how to colonize other worlds. Not only is there a gun to our heads, the trigger has already been pulled; it's just going to take a while for the bullet to get here, so we have time to move.

This is not the science-fiction topic. The planet is not going to become uninhabitable.

This is not the science-fiction topic. The planet is not going to become uninhabitable.

The planet most certainly is going to become uninhabitable. This is not science fiction, it is science fact. The only question is when and from what causes.

If we can limit the self destructive impulses of our species (ranging from ecologically unsustainable agriculture to fossil fuel dependency to outright warfare), it is still only a matter of time before asteroids, planetary physics, or simple solar ageing render earth uninhabitable. (Statistically, it's likely to be asteroids long before the sun ages significantly). So while we may have a hundred, a thousand, or even a million years before the odds catch up to us, it is inevitable that eventually the earth will become uninhabitable.

So we must ultimately develop an interplanetary civilization or die. There is no other possibility.

Maybe we are already part of a larger interplanetary civilization, from somewhere else.

Hey, if/when the day comes that we (humans) are gone and there's nothing left on earth but cockroaches, I'm okay with that.

I certainly don't see developing human colonies on Mars or elsewhere as a pressing immediate concern, but it is something we will either eventually do or we will die out.

The aspect of this that makes it something that I support putting serious research effort into even now is that it's likely to take a very long time before we can actually pull something like this off. Like centuries. And, like most research, we'll probably discover interesting and useful things that we can use along the way. So even if we never put people on mars, or it's not feasible for the next hundred years, if we've been working on the problem, and we have the bad luck to discover that there's a massive meteor heading for earth, we may have developed some of the technologies we need to deal with it better.

So while I would say that a human colony on mars, or even the moon, is probably premature right now, it's certainly something that I'd like to see more people working towards.

The planet most certainly is going to become uninhabitable. This is not science fiction, it is science fact. The only question is when and from what causes.


This is not fact--this the projection of your own pessimism. I'm pretty shocked that a scientist could call his own projections "facts."

I agree that one day the sun will turn into a supernova and incinerate the place. That is very likely--the rest is SF.

I had checked West Jet, Southwest, Porter and even Pan American, didn't see any flights to Mars. Am I missing something? Of course I'm not going on Air Canada, I'm not an idiot!

I certainly don't see developing human colonies on Mars or elsewhere as a pressing immediate concern, but it is something we will either eventually do or we will die out.

The aspect of this that makes it something that I support putting serious research effort into even now is that it's likely to take a very long time before we can actually pull something like this off. Like centuries. And, like most research, we'll probably discover interesting and useful things that we can use along the way. So even if we never put people on mars, or it's not feasible for the next hundred years, if we've been working on the problem, and we have the bad luck to discover that there's a massive meteor heading for earth, we may have developed some of the technologies we need to deal with it better.

So while I would say that a human colony on mars, or even the moon, is probably premature right now, it's certainly something that I'd like to see more people working towards.

Well it certainly won't be a planet in our solar system as they are all uninhabitable now so we would do much better to keep this one habitable as long as possible. To go from a planet that supports life to one that does not to colonize it makes no sense whatsoever.

This is not fact--this the projection of your own pessimism. I'm pretty shocked that a scientist could call his own projections "facts."

I agree that one day the sun will turn into a supernova and incinerate the place. That is very likely--the rest is SF.

Well a large asteroid hit or when Yellowstone blows its top next certainly doesn't bode well for us.

But even those events wouldn't make the planet completely uninhabitable or cause the extinction of the human species but it would knock off a couple to a few billion of us and cause massive environmental changes for decades and maybe even centuries.

Well a large asteroid hit or when Yellowstone blows its top next certainly doesn't bode well for us.

But even those events wouldn't make the planet completely uninhabitable or cause the extinction of the human species but it would knock off a couple to a few billion of us and cause massive environmental changes for decades and maybe even centuries.

Yes. All those are possibilities--but they are not facts.

Well it certainly won't be a planet in our solar system as they are all uninhabitable now so we would do much better to keep this one habitable as long as possible. To go from a planet that supports life to one that does not to colonize it makes no sense whatsoever.

That is a fact.

Yes. All those are possibilities--but they are not facts.

That is a fact.

Statistically they are both almost certainties (or so what I read tells me), it is just a matter of when... but I agree nothing can be a fact that has not yet happened.

This is not fact--this the projection of your own pessimism. I'm pretty shocked that a scientist could call his own projections "facts."

I agree that one day the sun will turn into a supernova and incinerate the place. That is very likely--the rest is SF.

The sun will not go supernova; it doesn't have enough mass. It will expand to encompass mercury's orbit and by the time it does so earth will have long become uninhabitable for biological life.

Similarly, we know that impactors have and will continue to strike earth sporadically, and statistically, the probability that a "planet-killer" sized asteroid will hit us increases asymptotically to 1 as you increase time. So while we cannot say when this will happen, we can say with confidence that it is inevitable.

Combined with all the other ways in which our planet is vulnerable to perturbations that can render it anywhere from somewhat less habitable to completely uninhabitable, developing technologies that allow us to survive and prosper on "uninhabitable" planets seems like a prudent investment.

I agree completely with Screature that our best short term goal should be to protect and maximize the ecological stability of the earth as it is, which is why I support the development of alternative energy, reduction of dependence on fossil fuels, and the most stringent environmental protections we can enact. But these goals are not mutually exclusive; "Hope for the best and plan for the worst."

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Indeed. If we were to rotate all the spy satellites such that they were facing outward, instead of surveilling each other we might have a decent chance of seeing dangerous incoming asteroids before it was too late to do anything about them.

Last week NASA 'inherited' two space telescopes that are superior to the Hubble and even to the planned James Webb telescope because the NSA didn't need them anymore. I.e. the NSA is discarding equipment as 'obsolete' that is better than the best scientists can afford to build. If space research had 1/10 the budget of the spy agencies, we'd not only know a lot more about the universe we live in, we'd have a great early warning system that could identify any possible NEA big enough to harm us years in advance.

Talk about screwed up priorities.

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Last week NASA 'inherited' two space telescopes that are superior to the Hubble and even to the planned James Webb telescope because the NSA didn't need them anymore.

Sadly, as nice as this donation may be for NASA, the administration has stated they have no budget to outfit them with instruments nor launch them until at least 2020...