Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars | Hacker News Reader

Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars

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62 pointsabsconditus60 comments

You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back. -- Vincent (Gattaca)

Bill Stone proposed a much more interesting challenge on his TED talk. Send a team to moon without return fuel and they'll extract the fuel from resources of the moon and return. I highly recommend you watch the TED talk if you haven't seen it already - it's really interesting.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_s...

Is he volunteering to go on this mission?

Interesting. This is close to the Mars Express plan, although in their model they're sending automated factories and other material ahead of time in order to build up redundancy and reserves.

Humans can live off the land just about anywhere on Earth, but with a Mars mission now, they would be wholly dependent for decades at the very least. For colonization to work, it must be self-sufficient nearly from day one. Otherwise, it would be just a few footprints, 50 years too early and countless billions over budget.

> Humans can live off the land just about anywhere on Earth

99% of humans only can live off the land because of technology. Most of the US would die tonight without man-made heating, clothing, and shelter. Mars would require different technology, to be sure.

> For colonization to work, it must be self-sufficient nearly from day one

Why? The American colonies did a lot of trade with other countries. They have never been "self-sufficient."

A Mars colony would need to place priority on low-density objects, like generating their own food and water. We obviously haven't done it yet, but we don't think it's impossible. They would still use trade to get in very wealth-dense things, like nuclear fuel and computer equipment for a while, but that doesn't mean that they would necessarily be charity cases.

I'm pretty sure the first couple of attempts at North America colonisation either failed completely or the colonisers were absorbed into native american populations.

The first colony in Australia nearly perished through hunger but was saved by the arrival of a second fleet of ships, but who themselves had suffered the loss of a supply ship in bad weather. It wasn't until the 3rd or 4th fleet of ships that the colony even started to move away from borderline starving.

True that. Colonizing would be risky, but out of a billion or so people you ought to be able to find a few hundred that are competent and willing to take on the risk.

A common strategy for Mars missions is to send the supplies there first. You can land habitats, vehicles, food stores, water-producing machines, power plants (and the return vehicle, if we're not talking about one-way missions), and check on them via radio before your crew ever takes off.

If I'm not mistaken, NASA and DARPA have already initiated plans to turn this into reality under the "100-Year Starship" program: http://www.kurzweilai.net/nasa-ames-worden-reveals-darpa-fun...

EDIT: As to this: "This is premature," Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14 wrote in an e-mail. "We aren't ready for this yet.", I think it's really necessary. A large part of the plan is a push for private investment and developing the private spaceflight industry. If what's happened in the past with both automobiles and aviation is any indication, there won't be any sort of massive innovation or progress unless spaceflight is commercialized. The amount of stagnation in the development of human spaceflight is absurd considering the way aviation took off in the last half of the 20th century.

Burt Rutan makes a very compelling argument to this end: (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/burt_rutan_sees_the_future...)

i completely agree about the shameful stagnation.

There are 2 things - the threshold is too high and there isn't a killer app yet. The Rutan/Branson's venture has crossed the threshold, and they may potentially hit the killer app target if they increase the distance flying - ie. "2 hours from California to Sidney" instead of "from California to an island in the Pacific". $130K instead of $13K in 1st class - it bites, yet the early adopters and economy of scale may as usually help here. I have my fingers crossed :)

It's great that these scientists have came out and said publicly that colonizing other planets requires adventuresome people who are willing to take some risks.

Yes. There is a cosmic rift between the engineers in the space industry and the politicians that run the programs. The latter have this misguided notion that the public can't handle the danger (and therefore won't co tinue to fund dangerous missions). In reality, they can't handle the boredom of the status quo.

This misguided notion that the public can't handle the danger also applies to other things like terrorism. With the right mindset I think people could learn to live with the occasional plane being blown out of the sky. Life was far more dangerous 100 years ago & as our creature comforts have increased we have have forgotten how to live with danger day-to-day.

And it's not like nobody will take them up on it either. If I'm in my late 60's and I don't have a family and they said to me, 'want to go to Mars and maybe die and never come back?' my answer would absolutely be 'hell yes.'

I would probably go on a one-way trip to Mars, assuming there was decent Internet access (not likely, given the 20-40 minute round trip for radio). I guess I'd have to have a buddy at NASA who could send hardened hard drives with the resupply missions.

Actually NASA has done some successful tests with Deep Space Internet:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_spac...

Interplanetary Internet Project: http://www.ipnsig.org/home.htm

The really cool thing about a one way to mars is that the one-way-naught would be far less isolated than the explorers of old. Today you could carry with you nearly all of the books of earth plus endless TV and movies.

Interplanetary radio would at least allow you to keep up with news on earth. With the tenacity of the amateur radio crowd, it probably wouldn't be long before the first dah's and dit's started showing up.

Back on earth, you'd be one of the most well known celebrities ever to exist.

Truman Show?

This is where tabbed browsing would shine. Open a page on wikipedia, open a bunch of links in other tabs, and by the time you're done reading the first page, all the others are loaded. Rinse & repeat.

I think TCP would probably time out on the receiving side before you even established the 3 way handshake. You'd have to set up some kind of store-and-forward proxy on Earth using UDP or something with a cache on the Mars side.

You could make this transparent to the browser. A forward web-proxy on the mars side that has a local 1TB cache that doesn't expire for months. If a request misses the cache, it is queued to be sent with the next upload transmission. An hour later, the requested URLs (and all related data that a simulated browser session required) appear in the cache.

You could auto-crawl sites via RSS feed, transmitting the contents many links deep. Each colonist could then subscribe to whatever sites interested them, including RSS feeds from sites such as HN. All the crawling would be done by a server on Earth which has a reliable (but delayed) channel to Mars.

The transmission between Earth and Mars would not be TCP/IP - it would be a protocol designed to maximise data recoverability without re-sending packets. It could use techniques such as 2d hamming codes for this (hashes within each packet and across many packets).

That is exactly what I was thinking, some kind of channel that just blasts content to the Mars cache using a list of specific requests as well as filling up the rest of the available bandwidth with a predictive algorithm and/or crawler. Unfortunately, I'm probably just gonna have to be happy if we even land someone on Mars in my lifetime.

This sounds too much like Stallman reading his email.

Some kind of delay tolerant protocol, perhaps? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet

Ya, online recreation would quickly be hampered by "no Martian HPB" game servers

Use a proxy with a 10 terabytes cache, it should be enough :) You don't really need HN in real time anyway, do you?

The original paper in Journal of Cosmology, http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars108.html, is more interesting.

A little off-topic (please don't hate me): could anyone recommend a good sci-fi novel about people first exploring Mars (or some other planet for that matter)? I figure there must be some good ones around, as the subject obviously offers much room (no pun intended) for cool plot ideas, but I don't know a lot about the genre. Classics welcome, but no spoilers please. Thank you!

I read Ben Bova's "Mars" a long time ago, when I was much younger, and I recall liking it then. Bova tends to express an ultra-libertarian viewpoint in his scifi, but very much less so in this particular novel; he does a good job exploring the real-world science of a likely first manned expedition to Mars, with enough drama to keep it interesting.

They are sort of corny and 1950s but I have always liked Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles."

For that matter Burroughs "Barsoom" books are fun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsoom

Definitely way more fantasy than sci-fi, but they're enjoyable nonetheless.

The Mars Trilogy (Red/Blue/Green Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Series is a very detailed trilogy about the colonization of Mars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

The first book, Red Mars, follows the colonization from an initial expedition of 100 scientists to the building of a space elevator and the development of an independent culture.

It's a good mix of hard science, politics, and the interpersonal relationships of the original 100 colonists.

The only technological assumption I thought was a bit of a stretch is independent robotic machinery. They can use these to perform public-works scale construction or filter minerals out of the dust with little human input.

Interestingly, the First Hundred were sent on a one-way mission to Mars as well, thus making the original question not quite so off-topic. Once you send someone that far, the thought of not bringing them back seems like an eminently reasonable approach.

remember, the First Hundred was really the First Hundred plus One. The Coyote wasn't supposed to be there. only a few in the agri group knew about him.

FWIW, I hated Red Mars as a novel. It had some interesting science in it but as a story it was way below par. The characters were not fleshed out well, the bad guys had no motivation, the chapters seemed strung together haphazardly with plot threads constantly left dangling. The "exciting finale" felt completely forced with a silly chase sequence that didn't seem to matter in the overal scheme of things.

Bad, bad book.

I thought the first book was alright. Not the best writing but it kept a pace and had interesting content. I read the second and part of the third, they were completely lacking any of the charms of the first.

It really helps if you don't try to analyze all of the philosophy and politics until you're done reading the series. I was a little put off by the deus ex machina of the longevity treatments, but I understand that it was necessary to keep a consistent narrative over the timespan it would take to actually terraform Mars. I thought the epilogue (humanity's colonization of the solar system and migration to the stars) was pretty inspiring though.

I agree, as a novel it's frustrating at best. I usually give science fiction a pass on plot and characters if the ideas are good. The science is generally sound, the ideas (especially the terraforming techniques) are very interesting, and the descriptions of the Martian topography help anchor the planet in reality in a way that maps or even the rover images can't.

THANK YOU.

I found this book horrifically tedious, and everyone I talk to apparently thinks it's the Greatest Story Evvvaaaarrr1!!!11!! It's nice to know that I'm not completely alone on this.

That often can be a problem with Hard SF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction) the characters usually take the back seat. There also was definitely some loose plotting in there.

All that said Red Mars is essential the canonical book when it comes to Mars colonization. Some excellent ideas are imaginatively explored within.

I don't know if it quite fits your criteria but if you want a good book about Mars you should check out Red Mars (and the Mars trilogy for that matter). It is more of a hard scifi as a heads up.

If you don't restrict yourself to novels in the classical sense, there's much to be read (and played) in the Civilization-like game Alpha Centauri.

Thirteen by Richard Morgan talks about colonizing Mars and how that impacts Earth's culture. It's also big on how our biology shapes our decisions, along with the shape of the world after the fall of the United States. Most of the action actually takes place on Earth, but still a fascinating book.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is excellent. Not 100% sure it contains the very first men on Mars, but it does contain everything afterward.

For a more dramatic and dream-like take -- not "hard" sci-fi by any means -- read Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. I consider them to be masterpieces, though again, it's a softer, more mythological-like style.

"Speaker for the Dead" might make it. Also, following the theme of more philosophical aspects of exploring new planets, "Solaris" could be a good choice too. Both books are classics ("Solaris" of a literature in general, not only of sci-fi) so it wouldn't hurt knowing them even if they are not exactly what you asked for.

Buzz Aldrin cowrote a novel called "Encounter with Tiber" about the discovery of alien artifacts leading to the first colonies on mars. 11 year old me loved it, FWIW

"Voyage" by Stephen Baxter is a very good hard sf alternate history novel about what could have happened if the US had pushed on to Mars after Apollo.

Not much about the actual exploration of Mars, but a good imagining of the technology and politics needed to get there.

I enjoyed the Coyote series, by Alan Steele: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(novel)

jrockway proposes one-way trips to Mars for politicians.

I love the idea of this. Considering we already have the majority of the technology for this, wouldn't it be possible to realize this through some sort of crowdfunding? Let's say you sell 100-1000 tickets at a price of 5-10million per ticket, both to individuals and governments for research purposes. For that, they can get their flight plus some basic accommodation and supplies once they get there.

I'm just thinking out loud here. Let's say we focus on the minimal requirements to sustain a colony on Mars. We could use robotics to build/establish a first base. After this, we could send some people there with additional supplies to continue building the colony. Once the initial constructions are made, and we would be self sufficient in basic stuff such as food etc the ticket price could be lowered and more people could get the chance to move there.

Then, after 20-30 years the possibility of returning to earth might also be there.

To quote Einstein: "I don't know if the Universe is infinite but human stupidity certainly is."

A one way mission doesn't necessary have to be either. I don't see why a person can't fly there never expecting to come home, then 20 years in the future after an unexpected discovery get an opportunity to have a return flight.

Another perspective, if something terrible happened to earth he/she could be the last person alive :\

There is a scenario which comes up somewhat frequently in sci-fi I read that I find really fascinating, but I've never seen anything use it as a primary story device. Essentially it's the notion that the first several waves of ships sent out to colonize would be overtaken by subsequent generations with improved technology, creating a situation where you might emerge from a relatavistic voyage across dozens of light years only to find a colony already created and thriving.

I think the one-way mission might be a similar situation. Presuming that the whole thing doesn't dissolve into farce, it seems likely that at some point a return voyage would be reasonable, potential health issues aside.

You know, I regularly see what you described as a "cliche" of the science fiction genre ... yet, like you, I can't name a single story that actually used it.

I can't name the story, but I did read one. To the FTL travel civilization, with a thousand years of scientific and cultural change, the cryogenically suspended slower-than-light travellers were basically smelly cavemen.

At least one story I know of that uses this plot device, at least in its backstory, is David Weber's Honor Harrington books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Kingdom_of_Manticore#Histo...

I see it come up pretty often in passing, sort of like the scenario this looks like, although I haven't read anything from this series. Do you recommend it? I'm always looking for new sci-fi.

If you dig space opera then yes: Honor Harrington is your woman.

The first few books are excellent. Once she gets promoted past the point where she can really be a ship captain, the stories turn political and start to drag a bit. Weber evidentally realized that this was not working, because he's started writing about new characters who are lower-level and therefore more interesting, so the newest books are once again a blast.

Thanks, it sounds like something I'd go for. As it turns out, I actually already have a few books by David Weber on my kindle but they are from a different (or no) series.

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