There may be another planet in our solar system

[ManaMan]

Interesting. Pretty humbling for astronomers if this turns out to be true. The scientists who made this hypothesis expect that it is WAY out from the sun, some 20 times farther away than Neptune is and it's size would be somewhere between Earth's and Neptune's.



Nasa is skeptical...

[kali o.]

I really hope Space Exploration becomes a true collaborative worldwide effort within my lifetime - isecg isn't there yet. Legitimately funded, democratic oversight, fully independent agency. There should have been far more progress in this field than there has been...space is the future. It's fucking limitless. I'm annoyed I can't go to mars yet.

[Eric]

Not in our lifetime sir. We still don't have a reliable method to travel super great distances, it still takes like what? 7 months to get to Mars?

[Julius Seeker]

Interesting, we may get back to the 9 number of planets I always thought we had as a kid back in the 80s.

If we want a global space effort, first we need to meet Vulcans.

[Replay]

I really hope Space Exploration becomes a true collaborative worldwide effort within my lifetime - isecg isn't there yet. Legitimately funded, democratic oversight, fully independent agency. There should have been far more progress in this field than there has been...space is the future. It's fucking limitless. I'm annoyed I can't go to mars yet.

So build a rocket! It's not like you don't have the money for it. If I had your resources I'd be posting here about once a year...I'd be building hydrogen engines the rest of the time.

If you actually want to collaborate on hydrogen research, let me know. I've spent several of the last few years looking into it, and it's not that hard to build a functioning hydrogen engine.

ROCKETS are always hard...but personally I think the better way is to build VTOL, sustainable light craft that can do suborbital well as a start, then work on expanding those prototypes. Apparently the real trick is radiation shielding anyway...the rocketry is a known science...but from what I hear, everyone from NASA to SpaceX is having serious problems building or even knowing the proper theory for real radiation shields with which humans can survive the ridiculous gamut of rays outside of just our local terran-lunar system.

And even if it didn't pan out, the hydrogen science involved would be of use in construction as well, as well as eventually realty. Selling hydrogen-heated-and-cooled homes to the ultrawealthy is going to be a big thing in coming decades.

[Don]

I remember reading that to do space exploration you'd first have to figure out how to live forever or at least live for a very long time. Most of the problems with space exploration is that it takes too long to get anywhere in a human lifespan and unless we started figuring out technology nobody even has an idea how they work right now, you're probably not going to get to a meaningful fraction of light speed anytime soon. On the other hand, the technology to greatly prolong human lifespan at least looks possible in our current understanding and if you can live for a thousand years then getting to Mars isn't that big of a deal. We still don't know how to do an effective radiation shielding, but it's not hard to imagine medicine technology advanced to a point where it'd be like, 'you got cancer, so take this pill twice a day for 3 months to cure it'. That technology is certainly a lot more feasible than figuring out how to keep radiation in check. Likewise the low-gravity issue it's a lot more possible to imagine technology that just replaces whatever bone mass and other stuff you lost as opposed to somehow generating enough gravity on the way and after you get there

[kali o.]

Not in our lifetime sir. We still don't have a reliable method to travel super great distances, it still takes like what? 7 months to get to Mars?

Pffft...because it's funded like shit. NASA was like 5% of the budget in the 60's...now it's .5%. Nevermind on a worldwide level. Space needs to make a comeback in the public consciousness, like it did with the space race.

If we want a global space effort, first we need to meet Vulcans.

Sex with an alien is at least 50% of the reason I am a space travel fanboy...I hope they look like t'pol...but hell, I'll take some tentacles. (I know you mean gifting "warp" technology...I just got distracted).

Don stuff:
I don't see why we aren't even experimenting with generational ships yet.

[Julius Seeker]

Just while we're on the topic of space. Relatively speaking, we're advancing very quickly. Former International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield brings it to perspective:


http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-iss-stream

[Don]

Generation ships would have to be huge and it's hard enough to get even some payload off Earth as is. Currently we don't know how to deal with stuff like radiation so the people on your colony will probably all just die at some point before they got anywhere. I mean the ISS houses up to 6 guys and I'm pretty sure if you stopped sending supplies up there for an year everyone there would die and that's still an area within the Earth's magnetic field and close enough that communication is meaningfully affected by the speed of light so that you can get verbal help in basically real time. I think there's been some talk about 3D printing as a way to replace the stuff you need but obviously that's still got a long way to go.

[Replay]

We are likely to see viable space exploration in our lifetimes if we live long enough. That however is under the caveat that it can and will *only* happen if hydrogen science gets to advance itself.

Fossil fuels are shit as far as the needs of spacecraft are concerned. Hydrogen and nuclear are the only propulsion techs humanity has that are worth a damn as far as getting humans up there. And nuclear is problematic because you don't want your spacecraft exhaust to be radioactive. (Solar works too, but mostly for onboard electricity needs or unmanned craft, unless your solar sails are the size of a well-loved inland sea).

I would guess we'd be up there already if the oil companies weren't so completely rock-in-the-road, in-the-way about advancing hydrogen.

[Replay]

Pffft...because it's funded like shit. NASA was like 5% of the budget in the 60's...now it's .5%. Nevermind on a worldwide level. Space needs to make a comeback in the public consciousness, like it did with the space race.

I'll be happy to take possession of that seventeen-billion-dollar "funded like shit" program if anyone likes. Pouring a bunch of money down NASA's throat is...not necessarily going to produce results by default. I noted that when the competition between Google Earth and NASA World Wind was going on. If anyone was paying attention to that...World Wind was...I'm not going to say "complete garbage", but it felt like it next to Google Earth.

I dare anyone to point to one thing NASA is doing that can't be done for a tenth, if not a hundredth, of the cost by the private sector. Yes, I know space research and spacecraft construction are expensive, but you should be able to do something worthwhile for $17,000,000,000 per year, and I can't think of much lately that qualifies. I'm willing to bet that I could get a reasonably next-gen hydrogen suborbital prototype craft into at least suborbital range myself for under eight figures after the research I've done on hydrogen, though it would probably take a few years. NASA is getting eleven figures. What are we getting for it, other than satellites?

The real push is going to come from the private sector - SpaceX, Armadillo Aerospace, et cetera - and from the potential profits of space mining. For instance, the lunar regolith is basically perfect for solar panels from what I hear, and likely full of other rare minerals besides. Lots of asteroids are full of gold, space diamonds, et cetera.

Someone needs to come up with an actually viable, mining-capable orbital or lunar craft, and the entire thing will snowball from there.

[Julius Seeker]

Just to echo on Don's post, we do have a lot of issues. Even landing on Mars is problematic, as it has too thin an atmosphere to drift down, and too strong a gravity to coast down gently. The distance is VERY problematic. Our best path right now is orbital space stations. They're the easiest to supply, and by far the easiest for us to expand. Plus the Russians have 45 years of experience with them, and they shared that knowledge with everyone on the ISS over the past 15 years. Gravity on Mars is a big issue as well, osteoporosis is going to be a huge issue for any colony; it hits everyone on the ISS who is up there for even a few months.

Now, if they could do something similar to what they did at the end of Interstellar or with Babylon 5, that would be interesting.

If we could figure out how to manage continuous acceleration/deceleration at 1 G, we could get anywhere in the galaxy in a few decades - relative to Earth it would be tens of thousands of years, but to the colonists, it would be in their lifetime. As far as FTL drives that do things like take ships into hyper space or warp fields - they work in a fictional universe; but, - they're fantasy. If we're going to do develop actual FTL drives that bypass special relativity laws, it's not likely that they'll be based on any sci-fi versions of FTL. Even if we could expand wormholes to ship size, that doesn't mean we can stabilize them or predict where they'll go... Not without a Stargate or John Crichton at least.

[Shrinweck]

Plus we have at least another couple hundred years before we start developing warp technology and the Vulcans would even think of contacting us.

[kali o.]

Bah - you guys are focusing on breaking lightspeed - my biggest issue is we are not colonizing or expanding into our own solar system (which appears to be fully within our technological capabilities).

Someone brought up the ISS. Thats a 6 crew 1998 relic. Think for a second about the computer you had in 1998...technology is far ahead. Why isnt NASA assembling something new by now? Plans for a fully expandable space station -- adding to it yearly. I want something the size of deep space 9 before I die.

[Don]

In terms of propulsion there hasn't been meaningful advancement compared to early days of space flight at least relative to the distance involved when traveling to any celestial entity that isn't the Moon. The problem is that you can get someone to Mars but they'd probably die from some kind of cancer in 10 years and that's considered unethical. Based on what we know human beings just aren't going to survive for very long in non-Earth environments and you're not going to get a country like USA (which still leads in space flight) looking for volunteers to Mars who are going to die relatively soon after landing on the planet. Also for all this talk about space mining and whatever, we really don't know if it's actually possible to get stuff out of another celestial body in a remotely self-sufficient matter. I think there's a project where they're trying to get water out of moon to process it into other stuff, and presumably the water exists directly on the surface as ice and even that is a daunting task, so there's no reason to believe you can easily just drill for more metal if you're missing stuff.

The reason why people are trying to get to some fraction of speed of light is because that's the only way you're going to get somewhere in the solar system let alone anywhere else before you die from radiation. That's why I think space flight is going to be dependent more on medicine technology not propulsion because I'm pretty sure none of the proposed solution to keep radiation in check really works. On the other hand we know we've made significant process in medicine and treatment of effects from radiation should definitely be possible at the rate technology progresses. It's not that traveling for 2 years on a capsule to Mars with a 50% chance of even getting there is bad odds (though good luck getting that past any Western based program) since people took much worse odds doing all kinds of less epic stuff but even if you don't care about the ethics dimension, it doesn't do much good if everyone has a near 100% chance to die from some kind of radiation related illness in 10-20 years. That's certainly no way to make a sustainable colony. If you could deal with the latter it wouldn't be a big deal that there's only 50% or even 5% chance of making it alive in the first place, because eventually enough people will make it alive across and if those guys can actually live with a normal life expectancy then you should be fine.

[Replay]

The reason why people are trying to get to some fraction of speed of light is because that's the only way you're going to get somewhere in the solar system let alone anywhere else before you die from radiation.

Good luck with that. I don't think people realize how fast even a "reasonable" fraction of c really is.

For some perspective...Earth orbit (and thus the Space Shuttle) craft have to reach 17,500 mph..."fast", yes, but not really in space terms. That's only 4.86 miles per second. c is, of course, about three million miles per second. While I imagine the Shuttle can do a bit above 17,500, from what I can see, it can't do all that much above it.

Therefore our fastest manned spacecraft is doing ~0.0002% of the speed of light so far.

Alternately...like I said...work on radiation shield research.

[Replay]

Bah - you guys are focusing on breaking lightspeed - my biggest issue is we are not colonizing or expanding into our own solar system (which appears to be fully within our technological capabilities).

Why not get on that yourself? Wait for the government to do most things for you and archaeologists will be digging up your remains, wondering why your skeleton is looking at its watch.

If you really insist that the government lead the way though, you and Newt Gingrich should do lunch. Just think how much real estate you could sell in Moonlandia.

[Don]

The reason why people are trying to get to some fraction of speed of light is because that's the only way you're going to get somewhere in the solar system let alone anywhere else before you die from radiation.

Good luck with that. I don't think people realize how fast even a "reasonable" fraction of c really is.

For some perspective...Earth orbit (and thus the Space Shuttle) craft have to reach 17,500 mph..."fast", yes, but not really in space terms. That's only 4.86 miles per second. c is, of course, about three million miles per second. While I imagine the Shuttle can do a bit above 17,500, from what I can see, it can't do all that much above it.

Therefore our fastest manned spacecraft is doing ~0.0002% of the speed of light so far.

Alternately...like I said...work on radiation shield research.

I have seen no reason to believe they're anywhere close to having the technology that can effectively simulate the Earth's magnetic field. If you try to block radiation with materials you pretty much either end up with way too much weight which would require a miracle propulsion system to even lift it in the first place or you're hoping some exotic material will be discovered. Now material science has progressed a lot so hoping for some kind of exotic material is not that farfetched but it still doesn't look like we're anywhere close to finding that kind of material yet. I always thought you can go with what I'd call the "Hong Kong manga pills strategy", as in Hong Kong manga whenever the good guys are fighting insurmountable odds, some shady guy always show up with a pill and the good guys take the pill and turn things around. Assuming you're still somewhere in the solar system, you can say start out taking all the pills you think that are going to cure or at least treat the common stuff you'd get from radiation related problems. They already have technology that can scan a guy and give a fairly good readout of all your vital stuff, so they can send that stuff back on Earth where a powerful computer can analyze it. The likely outcome will probably be like you got 5 types of cancer but that's okay if you have the 5 kind of pills that can treat those cancers. Even back on earth we know they're making very good progress in treating cancer symptoms. Now obviously we don't have pills that can treat everything right now but it's not hard to imagine in the future with more technology advancement we can cover a lot of possible cases, and I don't know if it's feasible to carry enough pills for everything you could possibly get but at least this solution seems tractable. I'd assume ideally you want something that's the equivalent of 3D printing where you can just make your own pills with instruction relayed back from Earth.

For the zero gravity issues I think you should just start out people who are essentially cyborgs that have mechanical arms and terminator red eyes and stuff like that. Again we know this kind of technology is not that far fetched and we already know that human organs gets messed up in prolonged exposure to zero-G/radiation so I don't think it's asking much of a sacrifice for the guys who are going to be risking their lives to have cybernetic body parts in the first place since that's a lot more likely to last compared to their human organs.

I don't know how feasible it is to carry enough pills,

[Replay]

Certainly not the Earth's, but a sufficiently advanced craft can run some kind of field-based EM shielding.

Therein lies the rub. Magnetic fields are still not all that well understood, nor their effects on us.

People who work around the really serious physics-research stuff have to be very careful, I know that, because poorly directed magnetic fields of sufficient size will just stop a human heart.

I can vouch for this. I put a reasonably strong household-level magnet near my heart once just as an experiment (however foolish), to see how pronounced the effect was. I was expecting momentary dizziness. Instead I felt sick and weak for almost a day.

Also, I do certainly think society isn't spending enough research on this, for what it's worth. But it's hard. Next-gen tech really requires a well-functioning economy, and we don't have one anymore. Who can afford to build spaceships except the government, Google, Apple, Elon Musk, and John Carmack?

That's the sad thing - corporations will probably get to space first, and therein a new frontier that could have had the pioneer spirit will instead be controlled by hive minds ready to exploit. I'm more hopeful about the rich individuals doing smaller-scale private research, there seems more of the joy of "to the stars" there.

[Replay]

I don't think space is meant to be easy. It's the culmination of a human dream stretching back before we *were* human.

One wonders at what point the first proto-apes looked up at the night sky and thought, in proto-human..."What are you, really?"

[Zeus]

Bah - you guys are focusing on breaking lightspeed - my biggest issue is we are not colonizing or expanding into our own solar system (which appears to be fully within our technological capabilities).

Someone brought up the ISS. Thats a 6 crew 1998 relic. Think for a second about the computer you had in 1998...technology is far ahead. Why isnt NASA assembling something new by now? Plans for a fully expandable space station -- adding to it yearly. I want something the size of deep space 9 before I die.

They're going to Mars on a one-way mission. Were down to 600 candidates (I think they want 6) in the hopes of colonization experimentation.

http://www.mars-one.com/mission/mars-one-astronauts

But yes, massively under-funded and moving at a snail's pace. But at least they're trying. Hopefully with private companies starting to make headway it'll get a boost beyond just governments. Greed is always a great motivating factor and much stronger than public funding, it may boost things along

[Don]

Mars One is more like a publicity stunt than an actual science mission.

Corporations will likely make further progress just because they don't care if they send a rocket to Mars and then it explodes and everyone dies. Well, that'd suck but in the worst case it just means whatever company sponsored that goes bankrupt. If the US Government did that someone will be calling for the president to resign and you'd have the space program frozen for at least a decade. Based on the technology hurdle involved, if you have a 5% chance to have a successful Mars colony by say sending a ship with 100 guys in it (we don't have technology to do that, but let's just say we do) that means you only have to try it about 20 times before you succeed and since you always have guys like Steven Hawkins saying how another human habitat in another planet is crucial to the survival of human race, then losing 2000 guys and whatever the associated cost seems like a small price to pay, but no government that isn't a dictatorship is going to take the risk, and Russia doesn't seem to be in a hurry to colonize Mars. It's not like people succeeded on the first try when they try to get to America or circumnavigate the world. You don't hear about the guys who failed because it'd just be some brave explorer who never returned, and getting to Mars is considerably more difficult than pretty much any exploration expedition ever (even in the most inhospitable area on Earth you can generally resupply in some way and you always have oxygen).

Of course, even if you're willing to take risks, I'm not sure how you'd be able to sustain a colony of any significant size. I know they always say just have a robotic factory or whatever that automates itself, but I sure don't see someone just put down some robots in a vacant lot and then they start producing stuff by just mining whatever's there even on Earth. I remember when some of the resupply shuttles were blowing up to the ISS they said if ISS isn't resupplied in half an year they'd have to abandon the station. Resupplying a Mars or even lunar colony would be at least an order of magnitude more difficult in logistics and it's likely a harsher environment compared to ISS too.

[Julius Seeker]

The idea of a Mars colony is expensive and stupid:

1. The gravity is still too low to prevent osteoporosis.
2. The distance will make expanding a martian colony incredibly difficult and expensive.
3. Mars is only accessible in windows which open every 2 years due to orbit.
4. Solar radiation.
5. Can Mars be terraformed? The answer is no. Even if it were, we don't have terraformation tech, the resources to stabilize the environment on a planetary scale; and if we did, we still wouldn't have anywhere near the ability to deploy it.

What is feasible is developing space station technology.
1. Centrifugal gravity may be a possibility if the station were large enough (See Babylon 5, or Interstellar).
2. They're far easier and cheaper to maintain and expand than a Martian colony.
3. It's accessible 24/7 365 per year, if an accident occurred and evacuation was required, we could do it; everyone won't die on Mars.
4. Greater protection from solar radiation. Plus it would be much easier to implement shielding technology.
5. Space stations don't require terraforming. It's probable that space stations would be required for terraforming once we had the tech and resources.

Mars One is doomed to fail: lower expertise and resources than even the Canadian Space Agency; a total budget of 6 billion budget, and with only 4 years to go until the first launch to set up the colony; very little patience. NASA projected 100 billion dollars just to get an exploratory team on the surface, and a 2030 date as the earliest feasible date at current time.

[Don]

Are you talking about like an asteroid colony or whatever? Because space station at least in earth orbit is getting awfully crowded with all the random junk we have up there such that it might not be as safe as it seems. I don't know if the radiation/gravity issue is easier to solve in space compared to something on land, though currently both of these problems are intractable enough that it doesn't really matter, as in we don't know how to handle either anyway (well, radiation can be handled if you're still in Earth's magnetosphere).

At any rate you can tell there aren't any technology that would do this yet because if you could live on Mars or outer space then such technology would let you comfortably live in the most inhospitable area in earth, and since we're not setting up camp in a desert/under the ocean/in frozen wastelands the technology obviously doesn't quite exist yet. I guess part of it could be motivation as in even if we could live comfortably in a desert there's probably no hurry to do that, unless it's Las Vegas, though it's not like there's some long term impact in living somewhere off Earth if you haven't got to a point where you can easily live anywhere on Earth. I always find the argument for 'backup for Earth' to be pretty stupid because if something wiped out everything on Earth, whoever living in Mars or Moon or whatever is all going to die too because they sure aren't self-sufficient, and if you can be self-sufficient in Mars or anywhere else, then so far as preserving humanity is very easy because all you need is a few guys running one of those 'can survive anywhere' spread out in a few places like way underneath the ocean, way underneath the ground, and so on, and unless something that literally destroyed Earth itself those guys can just hide down there and then rebuild when whatever disaster caused the problem is gone.

[Replay]

There is nothing about space that is safe. We are not evolved for it. It's going to take some time to get it right.

Ask most people working in the field if they care more about their own safety, or advancing humanity's dreams, and I have a feeling I know what answer you'll get. I met a beautiful young UCLA astrophysicist once at a party in my twenties, very much of the Trillian-from-H2G2 mode...after we all had enough recreational intoxicants in us as the night went on, she mentioned with a huge smile on her face how thrilled she'd be to give her life exploring a black hole close-up for the glory of science.

You can't survive that, unless we're all wrong as a species about the things - she was a competent astrophysicist from what I can tell, and so she knew that very well. The dangers from black holes make the ones of exploring orbit or the solar system look utterly easy; getting actually close to one means the utter destruction of one's craft and indeed one's very body as spacetime warps to a potential singularity around you.

But as the night went on I started to understand her viewpoint...and it was a beautiful thing. She really did want to give her life for science one day...and many people have given their lives for less valid reasons, I think.

Don't look for "safe" in space exploration. It's not there.

Look for "possible" and what's to be gained, and be willing to take the risks.

[Eric]

good news in future-tech: time to reach mars cut from a week, to 30 minutes! #1
2007:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=190294
"For example, PLT powered spacecraft could transit the 100 million km to Mars in less than a week"

2016:
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/13...ion-system.htm
and
http://www.iflscience.com/space/lase...utes-seriously

"Refinements of this theory suggest the time for a journey to the red planet could be reduced to just three days – or perhaps a mere 30 minutes."

"Such a craft would be launched into space where a large solar sail would be deployed. An immensely powerful laser orbiting Earth would fire a beam directly at the sail, propelling the vehicle. With little resistance, such a craft could quickly accelerate to a significant portion of the speed of light. Theoretically, a vehicle using this design could accelerate to 45,000 miles per second (25 percent of the speed of light) in just a few minutes."

Source PDF:
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-con...light-15-h.pdf
(Submitted April 2015).

But wait! the devil is in the details.

The imagined spacecraft is tiny: a "wafer scale" spacecraft with a 1m laser sail could be accelerated past Mars (not "TO" Mars - because how does it stop?) in 30 minutes, and reach Alpha Centauri in about 15 years.

A 10,000kg spacecraft, a 1km square sail, hit with a 1 gigawatt laser, could reach speeds of 10,000 meters per second (10km/second).

(I'm not totally sure, but that seems very slow, as Apollo 10 travelled at 11km/sec).

The paper mentions another key problem:

"A very difficult challenge is to slow the spacecraft to orbital speeds once arriving".
and concludes:
"A simple fly-by mission is clearly the first type of mission"

The thought-experiment was funded by NASA.

[Don]

The problem with these thought experiments is you can also make a statement like 'there is no practical reason on why you can't have a Hyperdrive' and that'd be a lot faster than anything they're proposing right now. A Hyperdrive requires using some exotic materials (or, as SWTOR calls it, 'just need some stuff that may or may not actually exist) but if you have something that may or may not exist then you can totally have a Hyperdrive, and you obviously can't prove that things that may or may not exist actually do not exist!

I find the laser thing to be extremely skeptical because currently work is being done on hypersonic weapons, stuff that can go at mach 5+ with conventional weapon and it is believed they can at least somewhat offset nuclear weapons without the massive boom because if you got a weapon like that you can hit any structure in the world within an hour and while you won't have a big mushroom cloud, even with just normal explosives it'd be pretty easy to cripple most leadership structures and so on and in theory that'd work as some form of deterrence. Now regardless of whether this actually works or not, the reason people think this might work is because mach 5+ missiles are quite potent. If you got this laser that can accelerate items with non trivial mass to sublight speed you can also set the trajectory to something on earth, and since energy is scaled to velocity squared, you'd get a kinetic weapon that's far more potent than the proposed global prompt strike weapon which we don't really know how to build yet. Yes I know the path probably isn't the same but according to the proposed solution, if we're at war with Martians right now we could just start hurling objects at sublight speed straight into Mars (don't have to worry about the stopping part) and totally devastate the Martians with some random laser that's accelerating whatever we're hurling that way. Since energy must be convserved this means we'd have to have a laser that can do the equivalent of creating meteroids to use against another planet, and while we currently aren't sure if we can even have any defense an extinction level meteor, apparently we can just build this laser that can hurl objects at a level as powerful as an extinction level meteorite, which implies that laser itself could've easily do enough damage to cause an extinction level event!

[Zeus]

Mars One is more like a publicity stunt than an actual science mission.

So? They're going. Why they're going don't matter. The fact they are is all that matters. It's just the constant idea of exploration that keeps the human race moving forward. Everything else is just the slow death of the race and this mentality and action, regardless of the motivation, is what's is needed

[Don]

Mars One is more like a publicity stunt than an actual science mission.

So? They're going. Why they're going don't matter. The fact they are is all that matters. It's just the constant idea of exploration that keeps the human race moving forward. Everything else is just the slow death of the race and this mentality and action, regardless of the motivation, is what's is needed

They've no expertise and probably won't even be able to get a rocket off let alone anything else. The publicity stunt seems to be the reality TV show they plan to have to raise the money which isn't going to be enough unless they stumbled upon some experimental sci-fi technology no one knows about. I have nothing against publicity stunts if they work. If the guys actually get to Mars alive and they want make a survival TV series that's totally fine because that'd imply they can actually get enough people to Mars alive in the first place and that'd be a huge advancement, but it sure doesn't look like they could do that.