Does anyone remember Mars One, that mission to colonize Mars that never happened?

Mike403Mike403
in General

I believe it was all a scam. Even if it was real, once the novelty wore off, it is just a dull lifeless rock. There are beautiful places to visit on Earth. I never understood the fascination of wanting to go to some place to see rocks and dirt and more rocks and dirt especially since they let everyone who was applying know that they will be there permanently and will not be coming back.

  1. If you were offered to visit the red planet, would you go?25 votes
    1. Yes
      32.00%
    2. No
      28.00%
    3. Only if a return trip was possible.
      40.00%

Comments

  • achetocuddleachetocuddle

    I never understood wanting to go to Mars even if you were planning to come back. Who knows how many people would even do that when launch day came.

  • Mike403Mike403

    @achetocuddle - It'll be cool to say I've been to space and to another world, but to live there permanently? No way.

  • achetocuddleachetocuddle

    @Mike403 It would be cool to say, but I'm WAY ok with not getting to say that. Lol. I could never trust the science to get me there and back. I wonder if some of the people in charge (if not a scam) realized/decided it can't be done, or at least not yet.

  • Mike403Mike403

    @achetocuddle - Yup, there are risks involved, but it's just like the people who try to climb Mount Everest. They might have a story to tell, or they might be one of the many bodies littering the mountain.

  • achetocuddleachetocuddle

    @Mike403 I don't understand climbing Everest either. It does make for some interesting reading tho.

  • [Deleted User]Daniel_12 (deleted user)

    Just before everything got shut down in 2020, I met a guy whose overwhelming goal was to be one of the first people on Mars. Every major decision of his life was made with an eye to what would look good to a selection committee.

    I haven't seen him since, but he made a memorable impression.

  • achetocuddleachetocuddle

    Wow. What a way to live. And I bet he was memorable.

  • Mike403Mike403

    It would be impossible to sustain humans on Mars unless they permanently lived underground or inside of domes and even then, harmful exposure from the radiation from space is likely. Earth generates a magnetic field from activity deep within the core. It deflects harmful charged particles from the sun. A protective field is something that Mars lacks.

  • RezzRezz

    Sadly as we continue to destroy our planet with overpopulation, pollution, stripping the earth of it's natural resources, global warming etc. finding another planet to inhabit one day will be our futures only hope at mankind evolving and not killing ourselves off completely or sending ourselves into a dystopian world.

    While I personally wouldn't want to be a Mars pioneer permanently , I have nothing but the highest respect for those that would to save our species.

    SpaceX last updated their website this year in February so I wouldn't say it's off the table, yet.

  • Mike403Mike403

    @Rezz - We may go extinct, but new species adapt to the environment it finds itself in. When oxygen first was produced on Earth, it was toxic to the first living things that were on the planet, but it allowed other lifeforms that were dependent on oxygen to evolve.

  • [Deleted User]Btown (deleted user)

    On my last trip to planet Ergo our spacecraft began sputtering so we had to make an emergency landing on Mars. It was very cold and windy and the sandy shale like soil was being blown everywhere. We were met by several very unhappy Martians who were screaming and yelling and shaking their fists while pointing directly at the bottom of our spacecraft.
    Upon further inspection I could see that we had landed right on top of their out house
    totally destroying it and sending a rank odor into the atmosphere. It took a while for us to calm the Martians down using sign language that indicated we would rebuild their facility.
    At this point they turned much friendlier and urged us to follow them. We were hesitant but they seemed friendly and showed no signs of aggression.
    After treading about a quarter of a mile in that soft soil we came up over a small rise and the Martians began pointing very excitedly at this mound of sand and began running toward it waving for us to follow. When we got to the mound they began furiously brushing the sand away. We approached cautiously and as we got near the mound we were stunned to see the outline of a spacecraft and in bright red, white and blue colors the letters MARS ONE.

    To be continued

  • MCcuddles2MCcuddles2
    edited June 2022

    I think Elon will pull it off. Each of his companies is designed to colonise Mars.

    I'm not going to address the why, but the "how", which is well on it's way.

    SpaceX- Starship will carry a hundred people at a time. The booster is also designed to have quick turnaround, like an airplane, so starships will constantly be launching. Starship has already gone through many tests and it's on it's way to development. What I'll be interested in is the life support systems that will sustain 100 people for the six month journey.

    There will also be a ton of infrastructure already sent to Mars and in place before any human sets foot.

    SpaceX is also perfecting starlink, a series of satellites that connect the whole planet with Internet. This will also be probably deployed on Mars.

    NASA and SpaceX have demonstrated technologies to make Methane and Oxygen from Martian resources. I imagine this will locally produce rocket fuel and breathing air.

    Tesla- Teslas have a "bio-warfare" mode which basically turn it into a pressurized vehicle. This tech directly can be used in Mars. The cybertruck is a heavy hauler and the metal it is made from is also the same metal that the starship is made from. This is a special alloy developed by SpaceX. The cyber truck is made from flat pieces of this metal. So the idea is to dismantle starships on Mars and use them as building materials.

    SolarCity- This company is perfecting solarpanels. The tech will be used on mars to power everything.

    Boring Company- This company specializes is drilling large holes. And these machines are conveniently the right size to fit inside a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket. I imagine that before humans get there, these machines will land and create large underground habitats which will serve as natural pressure vessels and radiation protection.

    OpenAI- This company is developing machine intelligence, something that will provide the ability for Martian machines to autonomously create infrastructure.

    Neuralink- This company is working on connecting the human brain directly with computer interfaces. Martians explorers may have direct integration with AI which may give them a strong helping hand in making decisions, as communication with Earth will be time delayed.

    In addition to all of this NASA is farming out low Earth orbit to private companies. The next batch of vehicles, consisting of SLS and Orion and designed for travel to Moon and Mars. First setting up a gateway on the Moon.

    Also, being an Astronaut is not quite like climbing Everest. You have thousands of the brightest people on Earth, working together to keep you alive and make your mission successful.

    All that being said, Space is extremely hard on a human being. Physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically. I wouldn't want to do it.

  • BabichevBabichev
    edited June 2022

    I don’t specifically recall anything called Mars One. I do recall discussion of colonizing other planets. I can’t see how that would be very practical given that they are inhospitable to human life.

    Forbes had an article about it, calling it a fake mission that scientists ruthlessly debunked.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/02/11/goodbye-mars-one-the-fake-mission-to-mars-that-fooled-the-world/?sh=387899f92af5

    As for saving our species by leaving this planet for other less hospitable planets - that makes no sense at all. If we can’t “save” our species while living on a planet that supports human life, what makes us think we’ll do a better job of it on a planet that doesn’t?

  • UCpaaHVg6u0UCpaaHVg6u0

    Think I'll rewatch Total Recall

  • JubalJubal

    As a species, we can't afford to have all our 'eggs' in this one little basket. Even assuming that we got everything on Terra perfect - zero emissions, no toxic waste, etc. - sooner or later something will clobber our world. A big meteor perhaps. Or something else.

    Humanity's futures lies among the stars.

  • GreatHornedOwlGreatHornedOwl

    @Jubal - you can probably scratch meteor strike off your list soon. NASA has a rocket on its way to the asteroid (much larger than a meteor) Dimorphos, to see how much they can change its path. The test system named DART lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket from California on November 23, and will arrive at the target asteroid system in September, next year.

  • SunsetSnugglesSunsetSnuggles

    I'm fine with humanity dying off, here. Just sayin'.

    @Btown Epic as always.

    ~ Sunset Snuggles

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan Mod
    edited June 2022

    @achetocuddle

    I never understood wanting to go to Mars even if you were planning to come back.

    It's an adventure. It's exciting. It's historic. You'd be helping to move humanity forward. It's a beautiful place. It's like going to the Grand Canyon except a million times better. You'll get an ace view of Earth. And that's all before you get to the best point of all ... because it's there.

    I would go in a heartbeat. On a one-way trip, sure: I'm old enough now. In fact I struggle to imagine anything better.

    There's no trouble with the physics, it's just a question of engineering. And there are some very difficult engineering problems to solve. It's not expensive enough for money to be a real issue.

    As for actually colonising, we don't know if humans can survive on Mars long-term. Food, water, air, cosmic radiation, etc are all solveable. The problem is the gravity, or lack thereof. We don't know what living in 0.4g does to you. Two Earth years/one Mars year should be fine, so operating observatories and mines and so on will be ok. But permanent living? Not so clear.

    @Jubal @GreatHornedOwl Earth is not going to be hit by a significant object (>1km) in the next few hundred years at least. If it was, we'd have spotted the pesky critter by now. It's certainly possible in the more distant future, but it's quite hard to imagine a future society which would be technological enough to detect such a thing but not be able to do anything about it.

    Best we can do at the moment is 2020 CD3, which has a 2.5% of hitting us on 9 September 2082 ... but it's only about 2m across so who cares.

    Having said that, the Chelyabinsk object was about 20m across and was undetected, so you never know.

    My money's on supervolcano.

  • Mike403Mike403
    edited June 2022

    @CuddleDuncan - From Mars, the Earth would just look like a blue dot in space. For the most spectacular view of the Earth, the moon would be a better choice. It's also right in our back yard and not millions of miles away, so it would be easy to come back. I'm not sure about Mars being a beautiful place. It's a nothing but a big ball of rust with rocks on it. There are places on Earth that look like this:

  • ZacRedBearZacRedBear

    First of all, amazed by how even the poll is right now. I didn’t think 2/3 of us would be that willing to go.

    I’d love a one way ticket if I didn’t have a family to support. Otherwise, I would’ve signed up to help shoot the reality show that Mars One was supposed to have. I’ve always been a sci-fi nerd, so being one of the first people to visit another planet would be a huge dream come true.

    As stated by @Rezz and @Jubal , I think the sooner we learn to live off-planet, the better our chances for avoiding extinction.

    I understand how others see life elsewhere as impractical, but what if you compare leaving Earth to leaving your parents’ house? Sure, that coffin-sized New York apartment isn’t great compared to mom and dad’s three bedroom, two bathroom house with a pool, but that’s how we’ll grow as a species. By pushing our limits of survivability and scope of our place in the universe.

  • sunnysideupsunnysideup

    One day, the sun will engulf the solar system when it ages enough. Colonizing mars will be great practice. But we’ll likely need near light speed travel at some point to go great distances (things moving at very high speed see time moving slower, so

    Not sure how it would be feasible anytime soon though. Would have to be done in stages and be very expensive

  • Mike403Mike403

    Elite Dangerous which is a space simulator that tries to be realistic and takes place in the year 3,300 has some story on how faster than light travel became possible. Instead of moving the ship through space, it moves space around the ship using a technology called Frame Shift Drive. You fly through a representation of our actual Milky Way Galaxy which is at 1:1 scale in distance.

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