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Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

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Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#61

Post by gus_massa »

eCa wrote: post #30
ewolf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fantasize about doing that sometimes, but usually, you can't get into politics without being a citizen — either due to legislation or because you won't be accepted as a representative by the population, for obvious reasons. But assuming you can get into politics, you'll still have to deal with an enormous struggle for power (be it elections you have to win or powerful people you have to convince) in order to get in…

But you don't need to get into politics directly. If you create a business that solves a local problem (local to the poor country of choice) good enough, and fairly enough, you can create ripple effects. Maybe not at national levels, but at regional and municipal levels. Not easy, but not impossible. (At least I hope so when I got my rose-tinted glasses on.)

Corruption. Remember that if you go to one of the 20 poorest or tyrannical countries of the word, you will probably go to one of the 20 more corrupt countries in the word. So while creating a successful business you will be "asked" to share a part of it, and I hope you can keep enough to create the ripple effects.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#62

Post by akiselev »

lumberjack wrote: post #34

I see that Mars One will be using the SpaceX vehicles. I wonder if Elon Musk will be fine with this, because as far as I see it, it is actually undermining the competitive spirit of the race for Mars which is more about building the better technology than actually setting the foot there first just to get your name on the history books. For someone as devoted to offering real technological innovation, as Elon Musk is,…

The obstacle of going to Mars has long since been a problem of desire and not technology. Obviously better radiation shielding, drugs that reduce the negative effects of zero-g, nuclear propulsion, and other technologies would reduce the risk of failure but at the end of the day going to Mars is a massive engineering and logistics problem.

A good analogy (I think) would be the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Sure it is trivial to build today with our technology, as (I hope) it will be trivial to travel to Mars in the distant future, but the reason its a great wonder of the world is because, despite a lack of modern technology, it was built as a national engineering project that spanned decades. Just like a mission to Mars, it was a daunting task (one that required a generation or two of slaves perhaps) that was pulled off through pure grit.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#63

Post by redwood »

nostromo wrote: post #35
tokenadult wrote: post #10

I wonder how many people are willing to take on the real adventure of living in any of the twenty poorest countries in the world, or twenty most tyrannical countries of the world (there is overlap between the two sets) to try to change those from the inside. When I was in high school, going to a high school that was named after an astronaut just after the first moon landing, I thought it was completely natural to hav…

Isn't this just western paternalism phrased to sound noble? Here we come, with our advanced ways, to fix problems you might not even consider problems.

On the one hand, yes.

On the other hand, the inclination to scream 'paternalism' when folks from cosmopolitan cultures talk about problems in homogeneous ones that are struggling with problems caused by modernity, I think, is often naive

Problems like the overpopulation that occurs when you introduce modern medicine and the green revolution but don't couple that with family planning cannot simply be fixed by organic cultural isolation.

There's a sense that we talk abut rich v poor or western v exotic or etc but the better comparison is cosmopolitan-global vs homogeneous-traditional. The latter simply cannot compete against the problems of today.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#64

Post by jlgreco »

the1 wrote: post #8
e40 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You can't image why? The answer is simple and one word: adventure.

pay me. i'll drop you off in the pacific, Pi.

I would pay to be sent to Mars. I would not pay to be dropped into the Pacific.

That difference may not make sense to you, but it really doesn't matter if you don't understand it. Nobody is trying to convince you to do it yourself.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#65

Post by akiselev »

SagelyGuru wrote: post #21

I don't get it. What is the point of sitting in a caravan on Mars and waiting to die? Is the guy proposing this going himself to set an example? If there is going to be any kind of colony, it needs some means of sustaining life and babies.

You wouldn't be waiting to die. You would be the vanguard of a possible independent arm of human civilization. Your work there would be critical to figuring out the viability of colonizing Mars.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#66

Post by InclinedPlane »

n3rdy wrote: post #49

My biggest fear would not be dying on Mars or on the way to it. My biggest fear would be having the novelty wear off and coming to the realization that I just moved to a trailer park.. on mars.

Definitely the first people on Mars shouldn't do so merely to live on Mars, they should be the sort of people who are going to build Mars up. And if that's the case then it's unlikely the novelty will wear off quickly. There is a lot to do on Mars and a surprising amount can be done with fairly small amounts of capital equipment. Within the first few trips there could be enough equipment to bootstrap a Martian industrial base with production of Water, Oxygen, Methane, and Carbon Monoxide from the ground and the air. Which means you can provide resources for living, of course, with water and Oxygen, but also you can provide rocket fuel (liquid methane and Oxygen), and fuel for combustion powered surface vehicles (compressed methane and Oxygen), and resources for growing plants, and resources for smelting Iron (CO). In a few short years a Martian colony could be producing food, concrete, Iron and steel, even plastics, all from local materials. And in not many years after that it could be producing everything from fully functional Mars habitats to microchips to spacecraft.

For people with drive and know how there would be as much excitement as they desire.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#67

Post by Mahn »

edw519 wrote: post #19

Both of my grandfathers did this 100 years ago. They never saw their homeland or most of their friends or relatives ever again. They must have known that was the way it was going to be. I often wonder how they felt about it.

Both of your grandfathers have been to Mars? How come we never heard of this before?

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#68

Post by redwood »

derleth wrote: post #27
tokenadult wrote: post #10

I wonder how many people are willing to take on the real adventure of living in any of the twenty poorest countries in the world, or twenty most tyrannical countries of the world (there is overlap between the two sets) to try to change those from the inside. When I was in high school, going to a high school that was named after an astronaut just after the first moon landing, I thought it was completely natural to hav…

> I wonder how many people are willing to take on the real adventure of living in any of the twenty poorest countries in the world, or twenty most tyrannical countries of the world (there is overlap between the two sets) to try to change those from the inside. That kind of paternalistic nonsense is what got those countries into the terrible shape they're in to begin with. Continuing it isn't going to fix anything.

On the one hand, yes.

On the other hand, the inclination to scream 'paternalism' when folks from cosmopolitan cultures talk about problems in homogeneous ones that are struggling with problems caused by modernity, I think, is often naive

Problems like the overpopulation that occurs when you introduce modern medicine and the green revolution but don't couple that with family planning cannot simply be fixed by organic cultural isolation.

There's a sense that we talk abut rich v poor or western v exotic or etc but the better comparison is cosmopolitan-global vs homogeneous-traditional. The latter simply cannot compete against the problems of today.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#70

Post by nitrogen »

lumberjack wrote: post #34

I see that Mars One will be using the SpaceX vehicles. I wonder if Elon Musk will be fine with this, because as far as I see it, it is actually undermining the competitive spirit of the race for Mars which is more about building the better technology than actually setting the foot there first just to get your name on the history books. For someone as devoted to offering real technological innovation, as Elon Musk is,…

Musk himself said he would like to die on Mars: "“I will go if I can be assured that SpaceX would go on without me . . . I've said I want to die on Mars, just not on impact.” (http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/03/elon-musk-die...)
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