A One-Way, One-Person Mission to Mars
 

From here.
My question is, if it's likely to be practical and productive, should NASA allow a volunteer to do this?

a suicide mission, huh?


they should allow 5 people to volunteer and train. cuz 4 are gonna chicken out at the last minute. The question is.....would you do it? Your legacy would be unbelievable.

If it was appealing enough? your family provided for for the rest of their lives thru the ownership of the book/movie rights alone?

What benefit would be gained by a human that cannot be gotten by robot? How long would you live on mars? a day? a week? a year? indefinitely?

i have a few questions.

According to the article, continuing to send an indefinite stock of supplies would not be hard. In theory you would live out the rest of your life there, or at least a decade or two until they figured out a successfully efficient way to get you back. Also, supposedly communications technologies are good enough that this person would never really be alone, they'd have NASA techs to talk to all day long.

Me personally, of course I would never do it. But I can easily imagine lots of people who would.

I can think of a number of people I'd like to nominate...

Send someone that is going to die in a year or two anyways. Its probably a waste of money but if we are up for it....

Send any volunteer who is qualified. I bet lots of people would be interested.

Promise them a kick ass video monitor that would fill up one wall of their Mars hovel, and give them a bunch of entertainment to choose from. A huge dish antenna that could pick up 100+ channels of tv which would be beamed to them personally by NASA.

A video phone for chats (more like e-mailed videos with the time delay caused by the distance) with anyone they want.

Not to mention a high speed (with a delay) internet connection for reading the Cellar, etc. Surfing would be slow, clicking on all those links and waiting for the page to load, but a feed of favorite sites would be plenty fast.

It wouldn't be so bad for an introvert with no family or friends. Plus, there would be plenty of work to do to keep busy.

*revamps resume*

I don't think I could do it. I think the idea is a good one, and certainly within the tradition of human exploration, but I'm not the guy.

So quit emailing me applications, please.

Why can't it be a couple, so in love that the thought of dying in space and sharing all eternity among the stars would preclude any fear of such a final mission? Instead of one person, they could be two really small people. Oh, and they'd have to really be gaga over each other, so they can only have dated about 2 months. Then they'd get into space and he would leave the cap off the spacepaste and she'd nag him about picking up his space boots and he's stop bringing her space rocks and she'd stop listening to him yack yack yack about Survivor...never mind, it wouldn't work.

Actually, a couple might be a good idea. I'd be afraid of pregnancy and/or childbirth complications though, so they should be sterile/infertile.

Maybe NASA insurance is progressive: it WILL pay for birth control but WON'T pay for Viagra?

Yes, NASA should allow Britney Spears to volunteer. The cost to weight ratio of having several people in one person would be practical for them and getting her off of this planet would be productive for us.

Imagine the corporate sponsorship they'd get out of it.

They should hold a contest for it the winner(loser) lives on mars.

The ultimate martyr for science. The person who does it is stupid.