Posted on 01/05/2004 9:47:07 AM PST by 1stFreedom
Exploring the outer reaches of our galaxy would be a fantastic voyage. The problem is finding willing participants.
Why not offer prisoners with life/death sentences the opportunity take such a trip? Give them a choice between rotting in prison or traveling in space the rest of their lives.
Send them on a mission to explore Mars or Jupiter. Base them on a permanent station on Mars. Heck, put them on the moon for the rest of their lives.
If they were relatively close, we could ship supplies every six months or so.
We could also send them adrift on an endless journey to explore the galaxy, a one way trip. They could land on planets, explore, and then return to the mother ship. Pack enough food water etc for 40 years.
No bleeding hearts here though. for death row inmates, set a self destruct timer to go off at a designated time. They still get executed but at least they'll have a hell of an experience up till that point.
This all might sound silly, but then again, it may be a novel idea. Until one of us is ready to give up their lives for long term space travel, it may be the only real solution.
Your thoughts?
That is what makes this vanity thread a total fantasy. Anyway it's not a novel idea and is not news.
They already do. Very fine people. So many volunteers that NASA can choose to send up only doctorates who are also test pilots. Take a poll. You'll find plenty of volunteers right here on FR, right there mixed in with the group who says: "Where in the Constitution does it say . . ."
If you mean a novel idea as in you're writing a novel about it, I would try to discourage you, for the same reason.
If you're serious about this, I see two problems: 1.) lifers and death-row prisoners are generally drug-addled homicidal idiots, and 2.) the sheer physical mass required to provide a person with "40 years of food and water" is mind-boggling. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to put such tonnage in low Earth orbit, much less accelerate it to escape velocity?
On the other hand, if your objective is to provide the Moon or Mars with lots of organic compost for the benefit of the sane colonists who will arrive later, then you may be onto something.
1. We dont know of any planets out of our solar system that could sustain, or even allow landings of humans.
2. Our galaxy is 100,000 light years wide.
They would die of starvation at 40 years before reaching anything out of our solar system.
Even the space ship Enterprise in the Star Trek series, which could speed up to warp 10 or so, only explored a very very very tiny itsie bitsie portion of our galaxy during its multi-year voyage.
Yes, they do. Perfectly ordinary, rational, law-abiding people. Life is a one-way trip as it is. You'll die out there. You'll die if you stay here. On Arrakis, you will die.
I would.
OK. Nope, I'd rather we save the money and send them to an uninhabited island in the Pacific, leave 'em with a book on survival, a bag of seeds and a knife.
Quite simple. We cannot even reach 5% of the speed of light. In fact, 1% is unattainable at present. To reach the nearest star at 1% of lightspeed would take 43 years; the news would take another 4.3 years to get back.
So the answer is: we're locked into a (mostly uninteresting) solar system for a very long time--if not forever.
Mars? Seen one red desert; seen 'em all. The only bodies that have interest for me are Jupiter, Saturn and a few of their moons.
--Boris
There would be no shortage of people willing to go on planetary mission.
You might have to dig a little deaper for deep space one way ticket missions but you could still fill up a pretty big boat.
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