Same here! I think I even started the first thread the board had about that project, though I can’t find it right now.
Much like What_Exit, I’m now too old and not in shape enough for that kind of endeavor, but if I were younger and fit I would absolutely go for it. “First man on Mars” was my dream job when I was a kid, and it’s now my nephew’s dream as well, so I guess it runs in the family.
I’ll probably never get the chance, but I’d still like to go to space someday.
I was a child when the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions went, and everybody wanted to be an astronaut. I sure did. But I was also age ten at the time.
Now, no thanks. I hope to see humans land on Mars, but I’m not willing to be one of them. Let younger and fitter people do that. I’ll cheer them on, but I won’t be among them. And that’s fine by me. Planet Earth has been a good home, and one I see no need to leave.
If I were a couple of decades younger and free of aerophobia and claustrophobia, I still wouldn’t go to Mars.
As @Stranger_On_A_Train relates, it’s just too boring.
However, I’d definitely consider visiting a celestial body with a more intriguing landscape and the potential for harboring life. Europa, Enceladus, and Titan would be my top three choices. Ganymede and Callisto would also be contenders.
This, of course, assumes I could magically make the round trip in about the same time frame as traveling to Mars. And if it were a discovery trip where tests would conclusively determine the presence or absence of life, I’d be all in.
It would probably be different in reality, but I think I would go. No danger. I suppose I could get internet, just somewhat slower. I can’t see what qualifications I would have, but if I was the best choice, I think I would go.
While I generally agree with you on the Mars vs almost anywhere else issue, in the context of the OP, where it’s Mars or nothing, I’d take Mars.
I live near Apollo, PA and ~a 30 minute drive from Mars, PA. On one of the moon landing anniversaries, a group brought soil from Apollo to Mars. It was funny/cute.
There is a spaceship on display in Mars.
Why?
I do not understand the why of space travel at all. Like airplanes times ten thousand and I hate airplanes. The man-created world is disorienting and anti-life enough as it is.
I don’t want to go anywhere that I can’t just stop and get off, be on my feet. That may be why I don’t like boats, come to think of it, unless I can easily swim ashore.
Apparently I’m very very weird.
Since the OP posits that this hypothetical trip would involve no safety concerns, hell yes I’d go (but a younger version of myself would probably be more useful to the mission - ask me 20 years ago).
Don’t much care about the notion of being ‘first’, but the opportunity to visit a different planet, even though it’s a huge desert, is pretty appealing. 10 days is not long to stay on the surface. Its a different planet - I want to visit a variety of places on it - the fringes of the icecap, for example, and I want to dig and sift in a LOT of places to see if there is any fossil trace of life there.
How are the amenities, perhaps if accommodations were super luxurious with an established culture of interplanetary sophistication I’d consider it. Otherwise if it’s just another desert yacht club I’ll stay on earth. The trip out sounds incredible though.
“Somewhat slower” would be at an effective bit rate comparable to a 2400 baud modem even assuming you have exclusive demand of available bandwidth with the DSN, notwithstanding the 4 to 24 minute inherent latency due to distance. So, fast enough for Usenet/NNTP, and use something like Gopher to download text or compressed still image files, but forget streaming any kind of video or downloading high resolution scanned images.
I can guarantee that you aren’t going to find visible fossils of any vertebrates or the shells of any mollusc-like animals because there just wasn’t time for any hypothetical life on Mars to develop such complexity. Any durable biosignatures are going to be in the form of chemofossils or geological strata formed from waste residues. And of course, any exploration done in person would require a human visitor to be encased in a heavy, bulky pressure suit with significant reinforcement and protection against the cold temperatures, abrasive regolith, intense ultraviolet radiation in daytime, and a range of other hazards, so the idea of doing traditional “rock hammer geology” is infeasible. As awkward as Curiosity and Perseverance appear to be, they are actually much more adept at extracting samples and getting high quality images, not to mention the wealth of data from the extensive and highly advanced instrumentation on the rovers, than any human astronaut could possibly obtain through manual inspection. (See Emily Lakdawalla’s The Design and Engineering of Curiosity for details on the incredible engineering and development of scientific instrumentation on these Mars rovers.)
Of course, just getting from place to place on Mars is a complication in and of itself; there is not enough atmosphere to provide lift to an aircraft capable of flying with human passengers and all of the necessary life support systems, and the lack of any oxidizer in the atmosphere means that air-breathing engines won’t work, which leaves the would be jet-setter with either some kind of advanced electric flight propulsion with a compact power source that doesn’t exist, or slowly driving some kind of rover across the surface towing a vast array of solar panels and hoping that they don’t get stuck in a weeks-long dust storm that obscures sunlight and prevents charging. Or, you can repeatedly risk ballistic flight and reentry into what engineers regard as the most dangerous entry, descent, and landing (EDL) profile on any solid body in the Solar System, all to explore a landscape that is less visually interesting than North Dakota, and a geology that is really only interesting to planetologists who really are really into mudstone and conglomerates.
Stranger
I could be the guy outside the craft cleaning it between duststorms; it would be like being at my sister’s place in AZ.
Maybe I could be a job coach for the others like I do here at work. ‘I like the plan you have for this morning Elon. However telling jokes about your junior member is grossing out the crew Elon. You could think of a different way really.’
I am reliably informed there won’t be any of these.
However, if I have to talk to Elon Musk, the deal is off.
I’ve been informed that Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.
That’s true - there’s nowhere for kids to be social. When I was a kid my friends would come to my parents’ place; on Mars there’d be nowhere to do that.
Renault: “What in heaven’s name brought you to Hellas Planitia?
Stranger: My health. I came to Hellas Planitia for the waters.
Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Stranger: I was misinformed.
Stranger
I’ve heard there are a lot of spiders on Mars.
I am getting old, which I believe is a bonus for a mission that will screw up with your chromosomes (yeah, yeah, I know: no risk, no hazards, no safety concerns. Pull the other one, it’s got bells!), weaken your bones, destroy your kidneys and generally make you miserable so yes, I would go. But “they” would be complete fools if they chose me: oh, I would so mess up their plans! I would not adhere to protocols, not respect schedules, skip the boring, tedious experiments, smuggle drugs and booze to the mission and sleep between naps.
If they chose me to go it would serve them right. Sue me when I am 1 AU away, I dare you. Your own bloody fault for having such inefficient selection procedure. I would die laughing.
I picture something like Dark Star but worse better (sadly, I only found a link in German, but you know the movie anyway, don’t you?).
Using the OPs estimate of a 2 year round trip with 10 days on Mars. I estimate I would need 148 1.75 liter bottles of booze and 2 ounces of weed. I think I could sneak the weed on but the booze might raise concerns.
I think you can distill booze even under zero gravity conditions. I’d have plenty of time to figure out how to do it, and I could run several experiments in parallel simultaneously. What else do I have to do? I would be the one setting the priorities. In the meantime, before distilling, there would be beer to be made.
2 ounces of weed? I’d say 1 g of fentanil. And seeds: papaver, coca plant, cannabis, shrooms (OK, spores, not seeds, but you get the general idea)…
I have no desire to set foot on another planet, moon, or other celestial body. And I have no desire to be cooped up in a spacecraft for two years. So put me down as a hard NO.