Mars: One Way

[BigV]

need scale. what is the mountain?

[ZenGum]

[orthodoc]

What else did you expect? These are guys.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Tonight is the night when, just out of curiosity, NASA gambles $2.5 billion
on a Look-Mom-No-Hands, one-time only, multi-stage descent to Mars.

CNET
by Dara Kerr
August 3, 2012

How NASA tests an against-all-odds Mars rover landing

Now you can see where Curiosity has been for the past year...

Discovery.com
Ian O'Neill
Jul 24, 2013

Curiosity's Roving Progress Spied from Mars Orbit

On June 27, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) crossed the skies
over Gale Crater and used its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)
camera to capture a stunning bird's eye view of its wheeled robotic cousin.



NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot
near the lower right corner of this enhanced-color view from the
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera
on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[BigV]

I wonder if that black scar at the other end of the track is the scorched earth mars landing site.

[glatt]

hi rez image here:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images...32436_1755.jpg

[BigV]

it sure looks burned, doesn't it?

also, there are a couple more blue dot/spots, probably part of the landing apparatus.

[it]

So I noticed this thread hasn't gotten resurrected since it was revealed that the Mars One program was a scam, either by intent or by degrading into one once things started to not go their way.

This to me bags the unfortunate question.... How do you - realistically - establish a mars colonization effort?

On the surface, it's very easy to think of colonizing space as easy as it was to colonize the new world. There are a lot of problems with that notion.
For one thing, anything you can find on mars is cheaper to mine or produce on earth then it is to fly it from mars to earth. There is no way to make a profit or even pay for the trip by trade in resources. Going to mars would have to be entirely financed by the fair tickets themselves - by people who's life goal is to go to mars.
And for most of the time, they are going to have to be wealthy people, even if you manage to cut own the trip costs, because self-sustainability is going to be remarkably more difficult. If the self-sustaining bar for the new world colonists was getting enough resources to set up a secure camp and start cutting down wood and hunting for food, for mars you would need a multitude of mining operations and refining facilities for anything from water to ores just to be able to extend life support. Until then every colonist would need to come along with construction material and resources to sustain them for a life time, and even that is only enough if you are willing to have laws limiting child birth and extremely tough labor conditions of a cottage industrial setup.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Before how, I would question why.

[BigV]

It'd be nice to have a backup planet.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That just makes people treat this one worse.

[BigV]

I don't agree.

do you treat your tires worse because you carry a spare?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Doesn't apply.

[it]

Even if splitting humanity between two planets might split our "caring per planet", which is possible in some sense - people raised on mars might care very little about earth's ecology - currently a human produces a carbon footprint and pollution a lot more then it produces "care for the planet", in fact almost all of that care - when it's around at all - expresses itself by slightly reducing the disregard and reduce their harm. You would benefit earth more by splitting the harm and sending some of the population there then you would hurt it by splitting the care.

If you mean that people who will still live on earth would otherwise recycle and support any pollution policies or buy less ecologically problematic products, will all of a sudden be ok with it because "Hey it's not like our entire species is in danger, its just our planet"... I think that's seriously underestimating how petty humans are. Can you think of an instance where that's true today in regards to countries, or cities, or... Anything? I work in the call & dispatch center for my city hall, and so far my experience is that most people can't deal with another neighborhood having a slightly geener park.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

That just makes people treat this one worse.

Let's take the opposite position then. Do you think people are treating THIS planet better because we don't have a backup planet?