His analogy of Mar' exploration and that of the North America (for late comer Europeans) expeditions is essential.

Who knows, the New Martians may make leaps in tech. ahead of us as a result of their struggle on their new planet. (perhaps aided by the locals)

Remember, they would arrive with thousands of years of human technology at their finger tips.

I think we can do it!

The math is what brought me to this idea, the pure illogical nature of returning a computer AFTER it has completed all of its requirements, at a cost 10 times the cost of delivery. The 'computer ' is, of course, a living, loving, human. That is a difficult and daunting concept to accept, but it is correct, and should be adopted.

We do not live forever. The measurement of our 4th dimension is finite. I absolutely do not see a reason why the where of that end point matters. There is the visceral, it cannot be denied. But as in any business venture of mine, I would not ask an employee to do, what I would not do or risk myself.

I do therefore, volunteer, and gladly.

Dean Unick

- Use robots, controlled 24-7 by shift workers on Earth (difficult but possible, far cheaper sending people), to set up limited industrial production capabilities on the moon – energy production, oxygen mining and liquifaction, a robot repair / equipment production shop, etc.

- Establish a small human base orbiting the moon, rotating to simulate gravity for long-duration missions, from which robots can be controlled with lower radio delay.

- Send several landers to Mars loaded with robots, spare parts, equipment and raw materials to Mars surface.

- Send a dozen people in a larger (rotating) ship / base to orbit Mars near Phobos. Expore Mars' moons directly, and use remote controlled robots to explore and build up a base on Mars.

- When they have production of air, food, shelter, power, fuel, communications and other survival essentials ready on Mars – THEN land the first long-term colonists. Beyond exploration, they'd have the economic goal to produce and deliver food, air and water to the orbiting base.

More thoughts on my blog, if anyone cares: http://silentemptiness.blogspot.com/2008/11/proposed-presidential-vision-and-plan.html

I was always bothered by the fact that if something went wrong on Apollo during the landing part of the mission, the two astronauts on the lunar surface were doomed. At the very least they should have designed the LM to sustain the explorers until another mission could arrive for rescue.

Before you mention the expense, we are talking human lives here. Yes, these men knew the risks and accidents will always happen, but the one I am mentioning did have a viable solution.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Apollo was sending humans to the Moon on the cheap. It was all about getting there before the Soviets and everything else, including science, took a back seat.

If we had followed the plans laid out by von Braun and Disney, we would have at least several lunar colonies by now, and perhaps even on Mars and the asteroids. But no, we let politics rule the day and now we are maybe going to have a manned colony in 20 years.

I am not holding my breath.

You can join the long list of people, often famous scientists, that claim things are impossible or won't happen, only to have progress laugh in their face. There are literally hundreds of examples of this throughout history that I can't be bothered going into… The stock standard example is Lord Kelvins famous dictum '…heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible…'. There are many, many more.

In the scheme of things when it comes to human beings, most often when things are derided as improbable or even impossible some set of circumstances and brilliant minds arises and conspires to drive technology forward and make tomorrow's improbable today's reality.

It is beyond prediction what forces may drive us to do things such as colonize another planet or whatever. Even something as simple as the pride and prestige of achieving such a thing for nations is powerful incentive, let alone any one of a million more complex motivators.

If I had to bet – I'd bet it will happen.

Actually, the ISS's construction won't be complete until 2010. The initial experiments haven't even been completed yet. See:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/index.html

I don't think we want the government running anything like this anyway. It's terribly inefficient and vulnerable to the whims of Congress's fickle spending urges. We need an X-Prize to settle effectively on the moon first.

No doubt, humans are going to settle on Mars – before og later, at least for a while. But why in such a hurry – we don't really need it now, for the sake of greath benefit to mankind. For now, and the neerest future, there is much more sence in getting to the moon, and get a good grip in handling this, with economic benefits for mankind. Then later upon that expirience challinging Mars. Meanwhile … the more and more advanced robots can be taking in use for Mars, as we allready are doing. The developement for such advanced robots, can then be used for exploring lots of other planets and moons further out and away, to give importent information about our solarsystem.

As in generel aspects of human destination – it's not neccesarely the distination in itself which is the most inportence, but the journey, and the experience collected during our journeys.

Lets face it. Few of us – living now, are going to experience manns setlement on Mars, allthough it could be interessting. What is of much more importence is the collectable knowledge we can gather about our solar system, as well as our universe. Thereby get a better understanding to our mere excistense and new purposeses for beeing here – on earth.

Please look aside for my bad spelling – don't have a spelling correcting program – besides I'm danish.

As for the "frontier" or "New World Explorer" analogy, with all due respect to Aldrin and others, I think this is fatlally flawed. Colombus didn't come to the "New World" and stay: he came, saw, and went home with samples and reports for his "funding agency". Others who followed DID stay, but that is where the analogy REALLY breaks down. They had come to a place with food, water, and breathable air there for the taking. They were not restricted to living in pressurised modules or spacesuits, all the while being bombarded with dangerous levels of cosmic radiation. There are compelling scientific reasons to visit Mars, perhaps (although the robots are much cheaper & getting better all the time), and there certainly are "romantic/heroic explorer" resons to go perhaps, but make no mistake: unrealistic fantasy visions of a terraformed future Mars notwithstanding, Mars is NOT an analog for "The New World".

"A modified proposal has also been offered by Dean Unick, to not return the first immigrant/explorers immediately, or ever. The cost of sending a four or six person team is one fifth to one tenth the cost of returning that same four or six person team. A quite complete lab can be sent and landed for less than the cost of sending back even 50 kilos of rocks. Twenty or more persons can be sent for the cost of returning four. It is far less expensive, makes for better science, makes far more sense, to colonize. Returns would be far easier and less expensive, and far safer, once there is a developed and operating base. Send brick masons, not pilots. Send older explorers, not young."

I'm usually optimistic about this kind of thing, but the more I think about it…sheesh…I think its more complicated than people think. And I don't know how this world would react to watching colonists die on another world.

But then again, people live on Antartica for long stretches in isolation…I suppose there's lessons there.

And I personally wouldn't go. Mars, as they say, is a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. There'd be too many things here I'd miss. I'd risk my life to get there. I'd just want a plan to try to get back!

Cool article.

Joe

We cannot afford a Mars version of Apollo, where we visit a few times to plant flags then not go back for 50 years. And by not afford I mean for both financial and species survival reasons.

There will be plenty of "normal" people who will not hesitate to go to Mars permanently.

Joe.

From most of the expresssed views above, one can immediately see how optimistic we all sound in even contemplating a one-way trip, let alone being one of the actual few chosen to go (I've signed up, so I'm going ).

However, we're thinking along lines from an Earthly sense rather than from a Mars(ly) sense — that is, our earthly emotions and mind-sets will need to be quite different to those for living on another planet.

We, in effect, will need to think as non-earthlings as we launch towards Mars — becoming the first, REAL Martians of the future.

John — [[http://www.moonposter.ie|MOONPOSTER - The most detailed poster around on important aspects about the Moon]]
(A nice gift for someone at Christmas)

The primary aim should be to create cheap, reliable transport, for long distance journeys. Personally, I see a Parsons with a Turbinia, (first steam turbine powered ship), correcting the illusion that we need to take years at a time in the out and return journey.

The first settlers will almost certainly be on the far side of the Moon where the land is already sold to purchasers that will want to exploit their investments.

As with the United States, the settlers will bypass the government "forts" and make their own journey into the destiny of the human race.

The human race will arrive, like it or not.

Mars presents a quite different challenge, particularly as it has deep chasms that will permit settlers to both live out of the full glare of the sun while being able to access a warmer climate than on the surface on the sun lit sides of the chasms. But we do not have any information on the structure of the atmosphere in those chasms, so that is, for now, wishful thinking on my part.

All such colonists, whether on the Moon or Mars, will have to dig into the surface and create structures that will be airtight and reliable.

But there is, in my humble opinion, a much better object to potentially colonise, Europa.

It has an ice surface that must have, (yes deep inside), a liquid ocean with potentially a living ecosystem that could provide food. We are used to living in a very low temperature environment where there is a total surface of ice. But that has many advantages, not the least, water in abundance. Ice is a great insulator and creating accommodation is going to be very easy.

Overall, the primary problem to be overcome is a reliable, economic transport system. Once that is in place, colonisation will occur where ever there is the potential for success.

It sound like sci-fi, but if the human race can only put petty politics and race aside. We can most certainly do anything our hearts desire.

Sidenote: We seriously need to find some other means to get to other planets… anyone for Microwave/UV/Nuclear fusion engines? 18months is like forever!

You're right, this idea has been around for a while (the one-way mission), but the links you refer to are for a one-person, one-way mission. That idea Nancy followed up hadn't really been aired before and it caused a huge storm on the web! Imagine that, one man or woman, on their own, going to an alien planet to a certain doom… thought provoking stuff.

The idea Buzz is referring to has been put together before – a group of colonists going to Mars to set up home. In fact, this idea is depicted in graphic detail in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" trilogy. Amazing read.

As for Digg, it's a problem we are working on. It looks like Digg has undergone some changes recently and completely innocent news sources have been randomly banned. Fraser is trying to get to the bottom of it. Thanks for trying to submit my article though!

Cheers! Ian