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ORIGINAL: subfever

The project appears to be privately funded. Given the tremendous costs, challenges, and risks involved... what do you believe is the true motivation behind the project?

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ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake

Trying to make something out of Mars is one of those things everyone knows we are going to take whack at. But the Lemmings plan is not going to work here. I mean, there.

I think the fundamental problem is the overall lethality of the Martian environment. This would go right past the sort of person who thinks the environment is something other people keep trying to get him to give a fuck about. In fact, the environment is simply the conditions that prevail. And Mars sucks. It has almost no air. And it has just a few scattered bits of magnetosphere, so the radiation count is bad enough that air doesn't matter. You have to solve both these problems to make any progress at all. To solve either of them, you need asteroid mining equipment.

Making air is not tough. Breathable air is a trick. Probably best leave that to plants. But a magnetosphere could be as simple as a Tesla tower at each pole. Each pole pumping power into the ionosphere at opposite polarity, powering every piece of equipment on the planet from two power plants, wirelessly.

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ORIGINAL: PyrotheClown

I would personally like to volunteer the whole cast of jersey shore

we can figure out logistics later,just get snookie and the "situation" on the gawd damn rocket right now

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ORIGINAL: theshytype

I'm all for it. Not for myself, though.

I like this planet way too much. I'd prefer to send those that make this one an inhospitable environment and those willing to go probably add nothing to this planet in a positive way. They seem to me to be too wrapped up in what's new and what's next to concern themselves with the now. They also seem like they're looking for a fresh start, but an easy way out. I'm all for dreaming and making dreams come true, but a balance of what's real is also needed.
If they can't hack it here, believe they can there, and discover they were wrong - not my problem.
The one way ticket idea almost sounds like a thought-out plan to permanently get rid of such people, but in a legal way.
Kind of works for me.

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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

As for the Tesla-style magnetosphere plan, it sounds good in theory, but you're talking about engineering on a truly astronomical level

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ORIGINAL: MalcolmNathaniel

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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

As for the Tesla-style magnetosphere plan, it sounds good in theory, but you're talking about engineering on a truly astronomical level

Picking nits: It's not astronomical, it's planetary.

Normally I'd let that go, but we are talking about colonization of another planet so let's not overstate the problems.

Planetary scale is still pretty difficult; it is rather easy to confuzzle the problems with "astronomical."

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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

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ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake

Trying to make something out of Mars is one of those things everyone knows we are going to take whack at. But the Lemmings plan is not going to work here. I mean, there.

I think the fundamental problem is the overall lethality of the Martian environment. This would go right past the sort of person who thinks the environment is something other people keep trying to get him to give a fuck about. In fact, the environment is simply the conditions that prevail. And Mars sucks. It has almost no air. And it has just a few scattered bits of magnetosphere, so the radiation count is bad enough that air doesn't matter. You have to solve both these problems to make any progress at all. To solve either of them, you need asteroid mining equipment.

Making air is not tough. Breathable air is a trick. Probably best leave that to plants. But a magnetosphere could be as simple as a Tesla tower at each pole. Each pole pumping power into the ionosphere at opposite polarity, powering every piece of equipment on the planet from two power plants, wirelessly.

Read Robert Zubrin's book The Case for Mars, and you'll see the overall plan isn't all that far-fetched. The 'no-return' option is puzzling, because there's already hardware available to make fuel for a return trip. As for the Tesla-style magnetosphere plan, it sounds good in theory, but you're talking about engineering on a truly astronomical level on a site with zero in-situ resources, such as roads, trucks, construction equipment. Raw materials are present, but you're literally have to land an entire manufacturing technology base onto the planet. Twice, since you're electrifying both the poles.

I'm in agreement this isn't a con job as much as it's a bellwether to see if the social climate is ready for the Next Big Thing, which is off-world colonization. Apparently, it is. So much the better, even if nothing further comes of this. All they're really trying to do is plant the seeds and see if they take.