Right now, there are thousands of people willing to head off to Mars forever on a one-way trip provided by oligarch donors. Total price? About six billion dollars. They will make money on the trip by selling the rights to a Mars reality show. People will be watching these four explorers on Mars in real time minus the amount of time it would take for the signal to return to Earth, which would vary from between about 3 to 12 minutes.
The plan is to create a system where there will be everything that these four people need to survive. Presumably, that would occur during something resembling a natural life span. Imagine that.
Mars is a pretty hostile place. There are giant dust storms that could crowd out the sun for days or weeks. The planet is not protected from constant radiation baths. There is virtually no natural oxygen on the planet. The warmest places on Mars never even reach the freezing point, and temperatures dip to hundreds of degrees below freezing. And most exciting, the atmosphere is so thin that momentary exposure would cause a person's insides to boil out.
This will make a fantastic reality show. I have some questions. Do all four of these people die in a catastrophic failure, or do they all get to die in separate incidents? Will the funding sources show us this as it happens? How would the funding sources recoup their investments if the show ends before they make a profit? What does a boiled-out human body look like anyway?
Could the people who set up the operation be sued for negligence when the travelers die from foreseeable risks? Would the court case be in Earth's jurisdiction? Or will the harmed families have to file a lawsuit on Mars?
NASA says that the cost of a round trip to Mars would be about 80 billion, or some 13 times a one-way trip. If the travelers are in danger or if some of them die, would NASA find it necessary to spend taxpayer money to bail out the oligarchs?
What do you all think? One way trip to Mars or not? Going?