[ExI] one way ticket to mars

Adrian Tymes atymes at gmail.com
Tue Apr 23 15:27:59 UTC 2013


On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 7:04 AM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

How about "assembled *and tested*"?  Once you have the infrastructure
on place, the added cost of making a few more rockets on Mars and trying
them out is rather small.  One could get up to at least the standards that
rockets made on Earth live up to before humans board them.

Thing is, any venture seriously proposing one-way trips as a cost saving
measure, is going to reject such notions out of hand.  They're going for
flags and footprints.
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