So the non profit Mars one is planning to settle Mars in 2023 permanently. They just released their qualifications for their astronauts. Would you go to Mars on a one way trip, grow your own food, and slowly die of radiation?

http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/21-faq-selection/251-do-i-qualify-to-apply

2023 is 10 years away,
the best candidates for this mission are most likely currently aged between 7 and the early teens.

7 months in space travel to get there and 10 years of prep… ...

Sharruma - 09 January 2013 07:38 PM

2023 is 10 years away,
the best candidates for this mission are most likely currently aged between 7 and the early teens.

I understand what you’re saying but from the website:

The age range for candidates will be limited. While the exact upper limits have not yet been determined, the lower age limit for applicants to apply for the selection program will be 18 years. By the time this person would land on Mars as an astronaut, he or she would be 28 years of age.

And even if you are not from that age my question still stands. Would you do it?

http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/21-faq-selection/251-do-i-qualify-to-apply

Never mind. Re-read the idea of it.

They still have to solve something simple as a good night of sleep.

Yes, I would go.

At least when you get there you will have a flower to smell

linky

Published: 01/05/2013 11:30 AM EST on SPACE.com

New photos of Mars from NASA’s Curiosity rover have sparked a buzz of discussion over an odd formation that some have dubbed a “flower” embedded in a Martian rock. The rover has also found a snake-like rock formation winding across the Red Planet’s surface.

The so-called Mars “flower” photo was snapped on Dec. 19 by the microscope-like Mars Hand Lens Imager at the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm. At the lower left of the image is a strange, apparently transparent formation that some Internet forum users on the website claimed looked much like a flower, according to NBCNews.com’s photoblog.

High res image available here @ SOL 132 Mars Hand Lens Imager 2012-12-19 17:44:33 UTC
(for some reason MoH blacklists the URL for the photo mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00132/mhli/0132MH0158001000E1_DXXX.jpg)

If I weren’t married, didn’t have any kids, and were about 8-10 inches shorter I would go.

I like the idea of going and colonizing another planet,
but I don’t think I could do it.

Contact me in about a thousand years when the colony is up and running
and maybe I’ll be willing to visit.

I’m just wondering about the ethical issues and possible legal questions.

You wouldn’t let a person commit suicide. Why would you let someone get stranded on Mars when they can’t honestly say for sure they won’t have a nervous breakdown (or worse) when they get there? I mean nobody’s had the experience of being stranded on another planet (OK, nobody we know of) so how can somebody really give an honest answer to how they’d cope?

If they do have a severe mental breakdown after being stranded on Mars would public opinion force a country to send a rescue mission? If that happened who would pay for it? Would there be legal prosecution as a result of it and if so who would be liable?

We are already in a situation where, for example, men and women risk their own lives to rescue adventurers be in a wild part of a forest or in mountainous seas off some coast. If a country did feel compelled to send a rescue mission to Mars then I presume they too would be asking their people to risk their own lives in the attempt.

The issue of ‘suicide’ typically attaches with a number of other mentally unstable psychological factors such as murder, abuse, manipulation, depression etc. which is why it’s mentioned and filtered as dangerous to others. Even a stable person, under unusual circumstances or alone and suffering may eventually elect to end their life.  But an individual who becomes frightened, confused or angry (which are among the factors that lead suicide) can do great harm to others around them before ending their own life.  Bad or ‘iffy’ wiring can short-circuit the entire program.

Exploration has always been risky business and even the first humans who left tribes alone or in small groups knew this even on primitive levels when they began the first treks.  So did our very first forefathers when they stepped aboard their first boats to cross an ocean they were sure would lead to a cliff ending they might fall off of and into a great void.  Yet, they did it, yearned to do it and suffered to do it.  The beginning of all we humans have become and will be is ingrained in our genetic code…...........we were the first bacterium and viruses to step out of the first ‘soup’ onto dry land and our walk-about desperately needs to get off this planet to find the edge of this universe and the next one beyond it.