Posted on 06/08/2012 8:22:44 PM PDT by presidio9
Last week we stumbled across the incredible plans for Mars One.
In case you missed it, those ambitious plans called for a build a trip to Mars in 2023, with the money for the trip coming from a "global media spectacle" and the explorers chosen in a style that sure sounded a lot like reality TV.
Oh, and by the way, it's a one way trip.
The plan was soon making waves on Reddit, with over 2,000 upvotes. The hivemind, as Reddit's crowdsourced comments are sometimes referred to, began asking questions. Mars One founder, Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, answered a few. "Our mission will be one of exploration. It will truly be the next giant leap for mankind," he said in one post.
Soon, however, the relationship with Reddit seemed to sour. Requests for a AMA (Ask Me Anything) were answered,
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Yes, but kamikaze is a Japanese word. So is hara-kiri.
Seriously, are we so risk averse as a society that we cannot allow explorers to risk their lives in a noble venture?
What happened to the Pilgrims? Jamestown? Lewis & Clark? The Franklin Expedition?
Exploration of the High Frontier WILL be hazardous.
I will gladly take the risk if I have the opportunity.
We are talking about the greatest step in expansion of our species that we have ever had. The Solar System is incredibly HUGE. We could have a human population in the trillions with colonists scattered from Mercury to the asteroids to the moons of Jupiter in a few hundred years.
The technology WILL evolve. Humans NEED the resources of the High Frontier. Somebody WILL colonize and exploit those resources.
Where is the imagination? Where is the adventure? Where is the ambition? Is our culture that dead?
The day we killed the Moon Program to fund more welfare- and that is EXACTLY what we did- was the day America lost it’s way.
There could have been a moon colony producing food air and some manufactures today, center of a huge growing industry,
producing wealth for us and all the world.
All the solar system.
Instead we’ve got EBT cards and debt.
Cool.
Thanks, UCANSEE2!
Hell the porkulus could have funded at least 2 Mars missions.
How many colonists will it take to tip Mars over?
Well probably the main reason so many may not want to go is because they’ll literally never see their friends or family again, unless some of them also make the one-way journey to Mars. Quite frankly, I like my friends and family, electricity, indoor plumbing and hobbies too much to live on another planet. Unless I’m a guinea pig for human stasis and wake up in a few hundred years with a booming population on the Moon and a few hundred thousand on Mars.
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