Podcast: Dead Martian Walking
Posted by Justin on May 16th, 2012
Fight! An epic battle ensues when Brian wonders aloud if everyone would be okay with sending a willing volunteer on a one way trip to Mars. Is it a bold, necessary step toward brining humanity beyond the stars? Or a gruesome galactic human sacrifice with no real value? Meanwhile! A secret is unearthed underneath the Kodak building in Rochester. Can Justin resist the temptation to cook a bag of popcorn on it and eat the tainted, yet delicious, results?
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May 17th, 2012 at 11:56 am
Holy crap, Brian! Roman Mars is a close friend of mine, and I am his biggest fan. I was over the moon to hear you wax lyrical about 99% Invisible. It remains one of my favourite podcasts, and I am sure Roman will be grateful if he gets a few new listeners.
May 19th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
I wholeheartedly agree with Brian about the one way missions. I just think the idea was framed wrong. You aren’t going to sell anyone on the idea of dieing in space, you sell them on living in space for the rest of their lives. I think when we get to the point where where people can sell everything they own, and afford to send themselves to mars with specially refitted cargo containers to live in, it’s going to happen. There is more than enough pioneer spirit (and people just fucking fed up with what is happening on earth).
May 31st, 2012 at 2:52 pm
I completely agree with Brian too and I don’t think you guys even tried to see his side. You kept trying to frame it as sending someone to die, but you two are both in the process of dying right now, we all are. It’s how we live the rest of our lives that defines us. If someone wants to trade the possibility of a longer life and the comforts of earth for the excitement of going to another planet, world-wide fame and the immortality of being the remembered as the first martian settler, that’s up to them. I’m iffy on the decreased life span anyway, he’s certainly not going to catch any diseases from other people. By your logic we shouldn’t allow researchers in Antarctica over the winter there because it’s difficult to get them out.
Robots are fine, but do you know how many people it takes and how many days to get it to move 10 feet over and examine a rock? A settler could tell you what it fricking TASTES like. The human brain just has millions of times the processing power that we can put on a rover. He could pick up dozens of different samples, realize in an instant if he saw a rock that looked different, and use any instruments he has when he gets the rocks back to his base.
May 31st, 2012 at 3:18 pm
I see your point, but my issue (and I believe AM’s) was the difference between difficult and impossible. Also, after what we saw last week, why send someone who we think can’t come back instead of throwing our hats over the wall for real colonization?
June 13th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
You seem to be saying “let’s just send a full colony there”. The problem is that a self-sustaining colony is out of reach technically and financially right now and in the foreseeable future.
So why didn’t we wait to go to the moon until we could just colonize it? Why bother sending robots to mars and instead wait until we can just colonize it? If a rich dude wants to spend his money and life doing this, why do you have a problem with it? His experience could not only help us learn a lot about Mars, but help us
realize and overcome many of the technical hurdles that stand in the way of establishing a self-sustaining colony. Another moral problem with a self-sustaining colony is that the children born there had no say in it. If there is a problem in the colony and we cannot send help in time, isn’t it worse morally for those innocent children to die than one old man that knew the risks?
June 13th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
No, I’m saying lets not send anyone on a mission where death is a certainty. Send him/her there and back.
I wouldn’t have wanted us to send someone to the moon without having the ability to bring them home.
—
JRY
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June 14th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
I am also going to have to side with wood brush on this one.