[ExI] one way ticket to mars

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Andrew Mckee
Subject: Re: [ExI] one way ticket to mars

On Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:40:19 +1200, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>>... Anyone wish to refute the notion that any humanned trip to Mars will 
> be one-way?  If you figure out a way to do it, this company would 
> surely be happy to hear from you.  I sure as hell never did figure out 
> a way to get back, and we tried approximately a jillion different
concepts.


>...I thought the NASA guys/robots found evidence of water ice up there?, a
small industrial facility, a few square kilometers of photo-voltaic panels ,
and a few busloads of zero wage workers, what more could you need? :-)
 
_______________________________________________

Ja.  The closest thing I saw to a plausible round trip mission was Robert
Zubrin's Mars Direct approach, which does a lot of this.  It proposes
soft-landing with a vehicle, then setting up a facility using indigenous
materials and manufacturing the fuel for a return flight from these
materials.  Interesting, but I couldn't convince myself that the reliability
model closes.  If I signed up for such a mission, I would try like hell to
make it work, but would quietly treat it as a one way trip, go thru the
stages of grief for losing myself before I ever left home.

I am seeing this 3D printing technology taking off however.  I can vaguely
imagine landing some 3D printers on Mars, making the factory with that, then
having a return rocket mostly assembled before the humans arrive.  Another
likely scenario has humans inserted into Mars synchronous orbit, never
landing on the surface, but staying there a couple years to operate
semi-autonomous equipment on the ground.

spike