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The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, tem

The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already launched SLS uncrewed around the moon, there's no reason to think it would take decades of dedication to launch one again 1-way to Mars.

aeturnum 2y ago
I think you're imagining a limited mission that's pretty far outside the tradition of space travel up 'til today. Consider the public reaction to Apollo 13 or Vladimir Komarov. Certainly, we could deliver a one-way small number of people more quickly, but I didn't think that's what we were talking about (it's certainly not what the article is talking about). Edit: I suppose I should have said "a few humans [permanently settled] on mars, [able to return whenever they like]" in 100 years.
- netsharc 2y ago
  I suppose grandparent comment is saying that a possible timeline is to send some people there today and finish building the rocket to pick them up and bring them back in say 5 years. A bit like the Boeing clusterfuck last year... It'd also be cool to send an empty rocket with auto-landing capabilities and supplies way before the manned mission, and when those Mars visitors arrive, they can move the tech needed for survival (which would've been invented/improved in-between) to the return rocket. But that all sounds like Kerbal scenarios rather than real life ones.
dmonitor 2y ago
We also haven't specified if we're sending live humans to Mars. Just shuck someone onto the next rover we send over and call it a night. Sending a live human, or group of humans, on a suicide mission in the name of bragging rights as a species would be really bleak. I doubt you'd get much political support for a Mars mission without a return plan, or at least a sustainability plan.
- sudoshred 2y ago
  There’s always an element of risk in any endeavor, just because prior space missions (the ones that get recorded and remembered) were successful does not mean that this outcome was certain. There are records of space missions that were known to be unlikely to sustain human life prior to launch.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    The same is true of early expeditions around the world. The odds of making it back alive were low, yet plenty of people signed up. We remember the ones who made it and forgot the ones who didn't.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  There is the odd school of thought that sending a bunch of tardigrades would be better. They'd have a chance of surviving, and they'd evolve there, and in only a few million years we might have another planet teeming with life. In the (very) long term, a much better use of our resources than trying to colonise Mars ourselves.
- travisgriggs 2y ago
  To some degree, wasn’t the exploration of the poles that took place at the beginning of the previous century similar? For country and glory. Motivated tons of men to have a go at the foolish. Many died, some prevailed. After all that we get to maintain a station there. Don’t take this as support of mars colonoziation which I think is a fools errand. Just pointing out that “suicide mission” seems to actually be motivational to the intrepid adventurer.
  - ema 2y ago
    There's a big difference between being wildly over-optimistic about your odds of making it back and expecting from the get go you won't make it back.
ryandrake 2y ago
Consider what it takes just to keep McMurdo Station (staffed by only 200-1000 people) running on Antarctica, and that's on our own planet. I don't know what the cost is, but according to [1] the budget for the US's Antarctic program overall was $356M in 2008. And it depends on reliable logistics to get people and things to and from it. From there, step up to the ISS, which costs about $4B/year to maintain and operate, an order of magnitude more. It's likely another order of magnitude (tens of billions/year) and probably more like two (hundreds of billions/year) to do the same thing on Mars. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Antarctic_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Antarctic_Progra...
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  Which makes it just a matter of priorities. If the USA spent 10% of its defence budget for a year on it, we'd be done. Would humanity benefit more from a Mars base than it does from 10% of the USA's defence budget? Almost certainly. Though, to be fair, there are a lot of other things we could spend 10% of the USA defence budget on that would benefit humanity a lot more in the short term.
  - hcknwscommenter 2y ago
    10% is not even 100 billion. You are wildly optimistic. 100B a year is likely closer to the cost of just maintaining a mars base. The cost to actually build one is likely an order of magnitude higher.
  - thelastgallon 2y ago
    The defense budget is a subsidy to oil companies to protect oil supply chains and pipelines. Which rich person/companies assets are being protected on Mars? Tax money is spent mostly as a direct/indirect transfer of money to the super rich while using words to manipulate the gullible: security, defense, laws, etc.
johnea 2y ago
And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go to Mars, AT ALL. This whole idea is the stupidest thing I've heard people seriously discuss. What would be the point? If you want to experience "life on Mars", bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year. If there's some burning need to go live underground, as you would on Mars, why not just do it in Nevada? The grocery store is a lot closer. The post at the top of this thread is correct in saying the logistics of supporting a colony on Mars would take decades, and cost billions (at least). I'm an advocate of exploration and science, and in the modern world we have effective automation. There is NO need to send people to Mars, absolutely not in any large number. > there's no reason the trip can't be one-way If the crew includes elon, I am actually in favor of this...
- Unit327 2y ago
  Humans are better at exploring and doing science than rovers, they could get things done a lot quicker and better. They can repair things and are very adaptable. A mission to spend 6 months on the surface would be great. Perhaps not worth the risk and expense though.
  - queenkjuul 2y ago
    When it comes to doing science where there is no food, water, or air, robots are actually much better at it.
    - Unit327 2y ago
      It depends how you are defining "better". Much cheaper and safer sure, but also much slower and much more limited. If it was me making the decisions I'd still go with robots, but I wouldn't call them "better". Apollo 17 astronauts drove roughly 12 miles in around 8 hours to get to a site and do some science. The curiosity rover's longest drive in a day is around 150 meters. If it drills a rock and encounters some difficulty, it has to wait send a reply home, wait another 4-24 minutes for the message to get there, wait 4-24 minutes for a message to come back before proceeding. It's also obviously unable to conduct repairs on itself or it's tools, or even do something as basic as cleaning the dust from itself. Robots certainly have the advantage in longevity; curiosity has been operating since 2012 and is still going, but it's like comparing a roomba vs a team of professional cleaners. I think if you asked a planetary scientist if they'd could go back in time and instead of sending curiosity, send a couple of people for six months, they'd do it in a heartbeat.
imtringued 2y ago
>Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. This is the ultimate admission that it can't be done. Anyone sane would at least propose a free-return trajectory like Artemis 2. Even if you are crazy enough to sacrifice your astronauts on a one way trip, you would still need to practice a lot of free-return trajectories just to train your astronauts and test the hardware.

aeturnum 2y ago

I think you're imagining a limited mission that's pretty far outside the tradition of space travel up 'til today. Consider the public reaction to Apollo 13 or Vladimir Komarov. Certainly, we could deliver a one-way small number of people more quickly, but I didn't think that's what we were talking about (it's certainly not what the article is talking about). Edit: I suppose I should have said "a few humans [permanently settled] on mars, [able to return whenever they like]" in 100 years.

netsharc 2y ago
I suppose grandparent comment is saying that a possible timeline is to send some people there today and finish building the rocket to pick them up and bring them back in say 5 years. A bit like the Boeing clusterfuck last year... It'd also be cool to send an empty rocket with auto-landing capabilities and supplies way before the manned mission, and when those Mars visitors arrive, they can move the tech needed for survival (which would've been invented/improved in-between) to the return rocket. But that all sounds like Kerbal scenarios rather than real life ones.

dmonitor 2y ago

We also haven't specified if we're sending live humans to Mars. Just shuck someone onto the next rover we send over and call it a night. Sending a live human, or group of humans, on a suicide mission in the name of bragging rights as a species would be really bleak. I doubt you'd get much political support for a Mars mission without a return plan, or at least a sustainability plan.

sudoshred 2y ago
There’s always an element of risk in any endeavor, just because prior space missions (the ones that get recorded and remembered) were successful does not mean that this outcome was certain. There are records of space missions that were known to be unlikely to sustain human life prior to launch.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  The same is true of early expeditions around the world. The odds of making it back alive were low, yet plenty of people signed up. We remember the ones who made it and forgot the ones who didn't.
marcus_holmes 2y ago
There is the odd school of thought that sending a bunch of tardigrades would be better. They'd have a chance of surviving, and they'd evolve there, and in only a few million years we might have another planet teeming with life. In the (very) long term, a much better use of our resources than trying to colonise Mars ourselves.
travisgriggs 2y ago
To some degree, wasn’t the exploration of the poles that took place at the beginning of the previous century similar? For country and glory. Motivated tons of men to have a go at the foolish. Many died, some prevailed. After all that we get to maintain a station there. Don’t take this as support of mars colonoziation which I think is a fools errand. Just pointing out that “suicide mission” seems to actually be motivational to the intrepid adventurer.
- ema 2y ago
  There's a big difference between being wildly over-optimistic about your odds of making it back and expecting from the get go you won't make it back.

ryandrake 2y ago

Consider what it takes just to keep McMurdo Station (staffed by only 200-1000 people) running on Antarctica, and that's on our own planet. I don't know what the cost is, but according to [1] the budget for the US's Antarctic program overall was $356M in 2008. And it depends on reliable logistics to get people and things to and from it. From there, step up to the ISS, which costs about $4B/year to maintain and operate, an order of magnitude more. It's likely another order of magnitude (tens of billions/year) and probably more like two (hundreds of billions/year) to do the same thing on Mars. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Antarctic_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Antarctic_Progra...

marcus_holmes 2y ago
Which makes it just a matter of priorities. If the USA spent 10% of its defence budget for a year on it, we'd be done. Would humanity benefit more from a Mars base than it does from 10% of the USA's defence budget? Almost certainly. Though, to be fair, there are a lot of other things we could spend 10% of the USA defence budget on that would benefit humanity a lot more in the short term.
- hcknwscommenter 2y ago
  10% is not even 100 billion. You are wildly optimistic. 100B a year is likely closer to the cost of just maintaining a mars base. The cost to actually build one is likely an order of magnitude higher.
- thelastgallon 2y ago
  The defense budget is a subsidy to oil companies to protect oil supply chains and pipelines. Which rich person/companies assets are being protected on Mars? Tax money is spent mostly as a direct/indirect transfer of money to the super rich while using words to manipulate the gullible: security, defense, laws, etc.

johnea 2y ago

And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go to Mars, AT ALL. This whole idea is the stupidest thing I've heard people seriously discuss. What would be the point? If you want to experience "life on Mars", bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year. If there's some burning need to go live underground, as you would on Mars, why not just do it in Nevada? The grocery store is a lot closer. The post at the top of this thread is correct in saying the logistics of supporting a colony on Mars would take decades, and cost billions (at least). I'm an advocate of exploration and science, and in the modern world we have effective automation. There is NO need to send people to Mars, absolutely not in any large number. > there's no reason the trip can't be one-way If the crew includes elon, I am actually in favor of this...

Unit327 2y ago
Humans are better at exploring and doing science than rovers, they could get things done a lot quicker and better. They can repair things and are very adaptable. A mission to spend 6 months on the surface would be great. Perhaps not worth the risk and expense though.
- queenkjuul 2y ago
  When it comes to doing science where there is no food, water, or air, robots are actually much better at it.
  - Unit327 2y ago
    It depends how you are defining "better". Much cheaper and safer sure, but also much slower and much more limited. If it was me making the decisions I'd still go with robots, but I wouldn't call them "better". Apollo 17 astronauts drove roughly 12 miles in around 8 hours to get to a site and do some science. The curiosity rover's longest drive in a day is around 150 meters. If it drills a rock and encounters some difficulty, it has to wait send a reply home, wait another 4-24 minutes for the message to get there, wait 4-24 minutes for a message to come back before proceeding. It's also obviously unable to conduct repairs on itself or it's tools, or even do something as basic as cleaning the dust from itself. Robots certainly have the advantage in longevity; curiosity has been operating since 2012 and is still going, but it's like comparing a roomba vs a team of professional cleaners. I think if you asked a planetary scientist if they'd could go back in time and instead of sending curiosity, send a couple of people for six months, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

imtringued 2y ago

>Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. This is the ultimate admission that it can't be done. Anyone sane would at least propose a free-return trajectory like Artemis 2. Even if you are crazy enough to sacrifice your astronauts on a one way trip, you would still need to practice a lot of free-return trajectories just to train your astronauts and test the hardware.