A Mars Colony in Our Lifetimes?

[Coito ergo sum]

A Mars colony is beyond the economics of any one country.. probably all countries combined at the time being and for the foreseeable future. I'd expect such a serious undertaking in about 50 years.

I shall watch for it with interest on my 110 birthday!

Another problem is that by giving up on the Moon base now, we lose all the experience gained from Apollo. There were plenty of folks still around that were salivating at the prospect of pitching in for Moon, Round 2. All that real world experience will be gone soon. And, all the records fade even further into obscurity, and get lost and become unusable.

The iron was hot, and instead of striking, we are letting it cool. It takes a lot longer to heat it up again.

[Jason]

Das ist eine ernste thread!

[Rum]

Blocked (in the UK I assume only?)

[Cormac]

On fraud.
A space program is not going to change anything there. NASA was a shockingly wasteful agency. It permitted itself to be ripped off for billions of dollars by its subcontractors. How do you expect to change that culture?

I recall discovering the wondrous concept of "cost plus a percentage of costs" as a basis for contracts to supply services to NASA when I studied organisational design in my postgrad.

Cost plus a percentage of cost.


Cost plus a percentage of cost.

Cost plus a percentage of cost.

[Jason]

Blocked (in the UK I assume only?)

It was blocked worldwide, but seems OK now.

[Jason]

On fraud.
A space program is not going to change anything there. NASA was a shockingly wasteful agency. It permitted itself to be ripped off for billions of dollars by its subcontractors. How do you expect to change that culture?

I recall discovering the wondrous concept of "cost plus a percentage of costs" as a basis for contracts to supply services to NASA when I studied organisational design in my postgrad.

Cost plus a percentage of cost.


Cost plus a percentage of cost.

Cost plus a percentage of cost.

That seems recursive..

[Cormac]

On fraud.
A space program is not going to change anything there. NASA was a shockingly wasteful agency. It permitted itself to be ripped off for billions of dollars by its subcontractors. How do you expect to change that culture?

I recall discovering the wondrous concept of "cost plus a percentage of costs" as a basis for contracts to supply services to NASA when I studied organisational design in my postgrad.

Cost plus a percentage of cost.


Cost plus a percentage of cost.

Cost plus a percentage of cost.

That seems recursive..

Yep.

Ka-Ching!

[Mallardz]

I'm going to sign up for Mars One!
I'd be great!
I speak two both Russian and English.
I'm not wanted on earth.
I have an IQ similar to, or perhaps a point or two off, that of a space monkey.

[mistermack]

I was thinking how risk-averse we are these days.
People who travelled to colonise America or Australia in the early days took a huge risk in those little ships. But they packed them with animals, wives and children and off they went.

The difference these days is that our lives are much more comfortable, even for people who have very little wealth.
Hundreds of years ago, people had little to lose.

The other difference is that Mars isn't a land full of promise. It's a freezing shithouse, with practically nothing to offer, except answers to scientific questions.
Even so, I guess that there would be plenty of volunteers for the trip. But not so many volunteers of people with money, prepared to finance the project.

I still think that colonising space is the real thing to aim for, and exploiting the moon is essential for that.
Mars is irrelevant.

[Sean Hayden]

We should develop on large asteroids and when the time is right some will cast off from the solar system. This may present a few challenges.

[mistermack]

We should develop on large asteroids and when the time is right some will cast off from the solar system. This may present a few challenges.

The only extra challenge of casting free would be losing out on solar power. That's not really such a problem, if you take enough nuclear fuel with you.
The real problem is the huge distance to even the nearest star. Mars is about 12 light MINUTES from Earth. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, i think, is about four light YEARS away.
My calculator tells me that thats 175,000 times as far away as Mars. If Mars is about six months away, with tomorrow's technology, then Proxima Centauri is nearly ninety thousand years away.

So something big would have to change in space propulsion, to make it worth organising the trip.

[Sean Hayden]

Yes, that is a problem. But the goal would be to establish ourselves along the way. How can you do that? Slowly I guess. Don't you think it's interesting that by the time we arrived anywhere those arriving would be vastly different from what left, and from all (except the very closest to them) that exists/existed in the points between?

I think they say that if intelligent life is out there this should have already happened. -sigh

[Blind groper]

I was thinking how risk-averse we are these days.
People who travelled to colonise America or Australia in the early days took a huge risk in those little ships. But they packed them with animals, wives and children and off they went.


.

Not at all. Explorers have always been a small percentage of the total population, and that small population is still there. The Dutch proposal to send a bunch of people to Mars one way, and pay for it by video taping them as a real life space/soap opera for TV got 40, 000 volunteers even without even asking for them

[mistermack]

I was thinking how risk-averse we are these days.
People who travelled to colonise America or Australia in the early days took a huge risk in those little ships. But they packed them with animals, wives and children and off they went.


.

Not at all. Explorers have always been a small percentage of the total population, and that small population is still there. The Dutch proposal to send a bunch of people to Mars one way, and pay for it by video taping them as a real life space/soap opera for TV got 40, 000 volunteers even without even asking for them

Yeh, I suppose it's not individuals are more averse to risk, it's society that is.
The lives that have been lost in the US space program are nothing, in the context of history. But they've had a major effect on the program.
We're happy to send people into wars, taking huge risks with their lives. But lose three or four on the launch-pad of a rocket, and the whole project might be scuppered. It's just down to the different levels of publicity that they get.

When talking about risking lives, I'm always reminded of the statistic from the first world war.
On the FIRST DAY of the Somme offensive, there were over 19,000 KILLED on the allied side.

It always puts the loss of life in modern days into a realistic perspective.

[mistermack]

Radiation in space seems to be a major problem, according to the latest info :

Rover radiation data poses manned Mars mission dilemma