One-way Missions to Mars for Settlement by NASA
According to an article in The Huffington Post, NASA is now aiming its efforts towards settling on other worlds. NASA Ames Research Center director Simon Worden explained this during a convention in San Francisco.
NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are planning for what they call a “Hundred-Year Starship” program in which space explorers would get a one-way ticket to other planets.
Mars is the first planet on the list for potential settlement.
Worden had stated that he expects this goal will be accomplished within twenty years or so, hoping to have settlements on the moons of Mars.
So far NASA and DARPA have pooled together $1.1 million toward funding the Hundred-Year Starship program, but Worden remains optimistic that he will convince additional individuals to invest.
Among others interested in the investment is Larry Page, Google’s co-founder. According to Worden, the price tag for such an epic journey into other worlds is around $10 Billion.
According to an article published by Popular Science, Mars has similarities to Earth that make human exploration and settlement ideal. One must wonder, however, how life will be sustainable on a planet that is virtually a massive desert. The atmosphere does not contain oxygen.
According to the writers of the PopSci publication, there are two main reasons why the Hundred-Year Starship program is favorable. TFirst of all, the largest expenses for space exploration are tied up in safely bringing the crew and spacecraft back to earth. Secondly, leaving people on Mars or other planets could lead to the long-term colonization of humans on theose planets.
Buzz Aldrin thinks we could be well on the way to making this happen within ten years and believes firmly in building a colony on Mars. He discussed with Vanity Fair that he was “convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we’re eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don’t come back? What if they stay there?”
UPDATE: From The Huffington Post: “”I think we’ll be on the moons of Mars by 2030 or so,” Worden said, according to Kurzweil AI.
I sort of agree with your point of view on this. However, it is the internet and half of the stuff you find seems right and is not. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to post. I added this to my favs and will check back.
Can I ask what you found in the post to be untrue?
This is an interesting idea,I think human being can sustain any challenge.But Can we say that after putting a group of people in to an oxygenless environment? So the people have to carry a life long oxygen reserve or else they saccrify themselves for the future.Why not we think of covering mars with suitable forest first? can the micro techinology help in transporting seeds? lot of questions in my mind.Can u elaborate a littlle bite?