Hacker News Reader

As others have said, just flying to Mars isn't going to teach us much that we don't already know from probes, but...

"Mr Tito hopes to pay for Inspiration Mars with a mix of his own money, donations from the public and the sale of media rights"

Maybe this is going to be the first space-based reality TV show. Could be worthwhile just to get the general population excited about space travel. I can't wait to watch this!

View on HN

You're right, it's not going to teach us much about Mars. But it's going to teach us how to get humans from Earth to Mars. That's pretty valuable in my opinion.

Also, first man and women to orbit Mars, first married couple to embark on long-term spaceflight...

There's a lot of notable firsts to be had from this, and we know from ground missions that people can certainly deal with being isolated for 500+ days (and not even being in space).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com