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Comment by pshapiro | Hacker News Reader

Why do the men and women have to be brought back? It adds a big amount to the requirements of the craft to get them there.

Perhaps that space, weight, time, and money could be better spent on developing long-term survival and colony-establishment equipment and techniques.

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From a purely logistical standpoint, if the first people you send to Mars had no hope of returning - how would they quickly enough create a bubble within which lies a life-sustaining environment to survive? Unless of course you're thinking of crash loading the entire contents of a remote manned space station. Psychologically, it might drive men and women to madness - being forever marooned.

Just saw this. More on Mars from Buzz Aldrin in a NOVA PBS special:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/aldrin-mars-au.html

Heavens, not by any means, "forever marooned." Just for a maximum of 10 years while we get another mission with a return vessel over to Mars. In the mean time, those men and women could establish a fledgling colony there with hydroponics, a rover or two, and ways to build housing with present materials. I'm not in a position to comment accurately about how long it will take them to establish the livable colony because I don't know specifically what provisions and methods of atmosphere production/recycling they're bringing with.

Think of it like a startup. PG once wrote something like (paraphrasing here), to prove that a startup will work, try to build the smallest functional subset and build from there. And launch quickly and iterate often.

After we get a craft to pick them up, we'll have a temporary colony that the return craft's crew can occupy.

Besides, if those men/women were not able to stand ten or twenty years of loneliness and hard work being colonists, are they really the right people to send on a mission to explore another planet?

> Heavens, not by any means, "forever marooned

You'd think by some of my friends comments visiting in-laws that they were visiting Mars this holiday season.

I wonder if there have been any Sci-Fi treatments done of the one-way colonization of Mars.

lol... We got a lot of snow here too. My cofounder was tied up for most of the day negotiating her way through the transit system back home. At least I assume that's what you mean. :)

I asked a question on Quora about the supplies required. Let's see what happens!

http://www.quora.com/Space-Colonization/What-provisions-and-...

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