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Monday, 25 October 2010

A modest Martian proposal

Astrobiology professor Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University joins the ranks of those advocating exploring and colonising Mars by sending astronauts on a one-way trip with no possibility of return.

Never mind that setting up a colony with no return trade is pointless and sending people to a planet of no return depends on cosmic levels of wishful thinking.  Maybe we can get something practical out of this.  After all, if you're going to be this callous, then why not go the whole enchilada?

Let's reintroduce transportation and turn Mars into the Botany Bay of the 21st century.  It's basically what you're doing, anyway.
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3 comments:

  1. eonMonday, 25 October 2010 at 03:02:00 GMT-7

    Will the good professor volunteer to be in the first ship out?

    Unlikely. I suspect that like most of the "enlightened", he's mainly interested in figuring out a way to get rid of all us peasants (except for a few personal "servants") so he can have Holy Mother Gaia all to himself.

    He should remember what happened to the Golgafrinchams after they gave their telephone sanitizers the boot.

    cheers

    eon

    ReplyDelete
  2. jayessellMonday, 25 October 2010 at 08:23:00 GMT-7

    That illustration is from one of
    Arthur C. Clarke's books.

    The Promise of Space?

    I'll post a larger one at
    my flickr page soon.

    It looks like Mayberry.

    *************

    About the one-way astronauts.

    Wasn't that proposed by
    Werner VonBraun?

    The difficulty is building a spaceport as the first colony.

    All (!!!) that is needed is
    surface-to-orbit capability.

    The Earth to Mars to Earth ship
    would stay in orbit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DavidMonday, 25 October 2010 at 11:40:00 GMT-7

    It's from Exploration of Space and is featured in Tales of Future Past.

    ReplyDelete

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