{"id":1640,"date":"2010-12-30T14:30:34","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T22:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=1640"},"modified":"2011-01-02T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T01:10:31","slug":"off-to-mars-to-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=1640","title":{"rendered":"Off to Mars — to stay"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Could it make sense to take a one-way trip to Mars? This notion has been floating around for years, but it got some recent press when Drs. Schulze-Makuch and Davies published a paper titled “To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars.”<\/a> Their thesis is that this might be the solution to several of the barriers to a crewed mission, providing among other benefits a major reduction in mission cost (up to 80% reduction, which is pretty dramatic!). This can only be accomplished by shifting our perspective on what such a mission is: not a there-and-back-again jaunt like a trip to the Moon, but the establishment of a sustained presence on Mars, paving the way for future colonists and expeditions. Schulze-Makuch and Davies declare that:<\/p>\n

\n“… to attain it would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of Earth exploration, from Columbus to Amundsen, but which has nowadays been replaced with a culture of safety and political correctness.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The initial reaction to a one-way trip concept is often one that assumes that the humans involved would immediately expire at the end of their mission. “One-way” sounds like “suicide”. But it’s not more of a “suicide” than inhabiting Earth, which is just as much of an ultimate death sentence — we just don’t think of it that way. Well supplied and informed, an expedition to Mars could survive for a long time, albeit in a harsh and demanding environment. They might not live as long as they would on Earth — or they might live longer; no one’s going to get hit by a car on Mars! And just think of the amazing accomplishments this group of 21st-century pioneers would attain, in technology and in science, and also in poetry and psychology: making Mars a human location, not just a light in the sky.<\/p>\n

This short paper is definitely worth reading to see how Schulze-Makush and Davies set out the arguments for, and the conceptual design of, such a one-way mission. I was heartened to see their clear statement that “No base on the Moon is needed to launch a one-way human mission to Mars.” This is true of any mission to Mars, but has become somewhat lost in the various Constellation program discussions.<\/p>\n

If there really were an opportunity to volunteer for a one-way mission to Mars, where you’d live out your days in a “cave-centered biosphere”, exploring and discovering and serving as a pathfinder for future advances — I’d sign up in a heartbeat. It’s difficult to think of any more important and meaningful goal to which I could devote my life here on Earth. (I know some, or all, of you will disagree with me on this, which neither offends nor dissuades me in the least. :) )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could it make sense to take a one-way trip to Mars? This notion has been floating around for years, but it got some recent press when Drs. Schulze-Makuch and Davies published a paper titled “To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars.” Their thesis is that this might be the solution to several of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,14,10,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1657,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions\/1657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}