Comments on: Space tourist Dennis Tito plans mission to Mars, manned by a man and woman (sex in space!)

By: Derek Almond

Derek Almond — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:29:00 +0000

Maybe they just want one of each so that Girls feel they’ve got a role model up there too?

By: rbrtwjohnson

rbrtwjohnson — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 02:15:00 +0000

A manned mission to Mars will be a giant leap for mankind. But it is needed to develop fusion-powered spacecrafts so that the roundtrips to Red planet become more economically affordable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUrt186pWoA

By: Maggie Koerth-Baker

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:44:00 +0000

That’s a really good point, actually. Maybe they can get Lin and Larry Pardey!

By: OtherMichael

OtherMichael — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:21:00 +0000

np. I often use the words "male reproductive system" in its gender-neutral sense, as well. There's not really much of a difference between a system designed to generate brand-new sperm on demand, and a system that permanently stores, and periodically releases, a non-renewable cache of eggs. UPDATE: technically, I'm an idiot. But only if you ignore common parlance. Of which we both, I suspect, commonly parle.

By: License Farm

License Farm — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:19:00 +0000

Xeni, though we would all miss you terribly here on Terra, I feel like this mission is yours & Miles’ destiny. Not being arch about that statement in the least.

By: dculberson

dculberson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:22:00 +0000

Uggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

By: Ean Moody

Ean Moody — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:59:00 +0000

Antichrist Baby from SPACE!
“He was born to kill for your sins.”
Coming soon to a cinema near you, in Technicolor!

By: Ean Moody

Ean Moody — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:56:00 +0000

I think “beyond childbearing age” was based on the risk of radiation exposure. It’s likely that whoever goes will get dosed with fairly high levels of radiation during their time in space, and it might ruin their chance of having kids as a result. If they’re too old? One less risk.

Probably also more useful for getting results about how “average” people will react to long term space travel. A 30-something military flight pilot is very different from a 50-year-old couple physiologically.

By: Ean Moody

Ean Moody — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:53:00 +0000

This.

The recovery in particular is troublesome. It’s nearly as difficult as launching a rocket from Earth, and would require nearly as much fuel. The logistics of landing with that much fuel (or getting it into space all at once in the first place) means you’re looking at either manufacturing your fuel there, or having unmanned vehicles drop it off in advance so you can load up.I think this is why so many manned Mars mission proposals are one-way affairs.

By: Ean Moody

Ean Moody — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:48:00 +0000

Data gathering. If they do a flyby, they test a good chunk of the issues of sending a landing crew (notably crew survivability and spacecraft design issues) making them easier to plan for on landing missions.

We did several flybys of the moon before landing for exactly this reason.

By: Ean Moody

Ean Moody — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:47:00 +0000

He also failed to note that space sex has proven to be untenable and a lot less fun than imagined. Turns out gravity is pretty essential to the process.

By: peedee

peedee — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:18:00 +0000

There is a HUGE difference between living within the Earth’s magnetosphere, with the Earth framed 8mm in every port, vers gliding silently through dark silent unchanging fabric of space with raw gamma ray exposure. And since it’s just a ballistic mission, there would be absolutely nothing for them to keep their minds busy, not to mention the extraordinary vertigo of weightlessness, and knowing that you can’t bail out, that no matter what happens, like QE1 through QEn, we are all trapped on this space trip towards total disenfranchisement.

By: peedee

peedee — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:04:00 +0000

Yes, hurtling through unmoving space, weightless with nausea in a 20 foot fully irradiated tin can for nearly two years with canned air and freeze-dried food, would make anyone yearn for that following two year return leg, knowing that if they survive, their bones will be reduced to mucilage and their flesh would be boiling with egg-sized tumors for the TV viewers!! BRILLIANT!

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 05:10:00 +0000

It’s elementary, my dear Wilkinson.

By: Shannon Larratt

Shannon Larratt — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:50:00 +0000

The point, in addition to a wide range of valid science, is to get a new generation of people inspired and excited about space. And I’m sure it will also push Elon Musk to get even more serious about his Mars retirement plans. I have no doubt that this has incredible potential to be a desperately needed first step toward colonization.

By: Shannon Larratt

Shannon Larratt — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:45:00 +0000

I would wager that they will choose an older couple with extensive sailing experience — anyone who has lived with a loved one on a sub-40′ sailboat, including ocean crossings with no sight of land for weeks, has a very good potential of being able to handle the stresses of this trip.

By: Jeff Wilkinson

Jeff Wilkinson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:41:00 +0000

I’ve long held that breasts are the Goddess’s way of telling us that the future of our species is in space.

By: Fantome_NR

Fantome_NR — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:17:00 +0000

lol. this would open the market for space cigarettes.

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:59:00 +0000

Call me shallow, but I happen to think a great deal of our awesome technology is simply going to waste until the day we’re making zero-G porn with large-breasted women.

And maybe it’s just me, but somehow I doubt that

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:58:00 +0000

If you’ve never been in a modern birthing room at a hospital, they can be pretty cozy, comforting spaces.

All the ones that I’ve seen were decorated in the 1980s. Not very comforting to me, at least.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:56:00 +0000

If having sex in space is one of the purported missions of this launch, then having babies is the logical next step.

Wouldn’t a shower and a snack be more logical next steps.

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:32:00 +0000

I like how everyone is going on about the sex and baby part, where the first thing I thought was 500 days in a tiny confined space with my wife. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND? No seriously, I love her more than life, ect.., but damn there are times when I need some me space. That capsule better than some separate compartments, and there better be two beds/sleeping gear (in separate compartments obviously).

He could probably make all the money that would be needed to fund this back by just having a camera installed and releasing it as reality TV.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:30:00 +0000

@michaelrohansmith:disqus

Well okay but factor in the landers which we have been sending there, and initially I would want to do an open ended mission.

The sad fact is that we don’t (yet) know how to get a big enough payload to the surface of Mars to support human life for any significant amount of time, let alone enough hardware to get someone back. That “sky crane” maneuver for Curiosity pushed the boundaries of our current capabilities as it was.

By: William Nicholls

William Nicholls — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:30:00 +0000

And how does he try to inspire STEM education? Why with those lowly visual and literary arts. If you do send a couple to circumnavigate Mars and likely contract cancer together, at least let them have enough arts and humanities knowledge to be able to communicate their experience well to the rest of us. Personally, I think this venture has a cliche’d aging tycoon funding a space-ark plot…a little too B-movie retro for this century.

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:29:00 +0000

Seriously. I think if a company put out an open invitation for anyone to apply for a one way ONLY trip to Mars (obviously having to pass certain physical/mental tests would be part of it) they’d have more applicants then they could look through in a year.

If I wasn’t married I’d go. It would be glorious (even if everything went to shit and I died drifting through space, or some asshole programs the computer wrong and I hit the terrain at a couple hundred mph.)

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:26:00 +0000

How much could we learn by sending Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan?

By: jackbird

jackbird — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:25:00 +0000

The T-pose just MAKES that.

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:24:00 +0000

Well I could certainly try some new positions, but without gravity helping out I think I’m going to get tired even more quickly. That or have some seriously strong core muscles one.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:23:00 +0000

“It’s like a fracking snow globe in here!”

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 23:10:00 +0000

The early Apollo launches were tests of the same boosters which were used in the manned flights.

Except for its long duration (which could be done in LEO) this mission isn’t contributing anything to an eventual Mars-mission-with-landing. The hardware for that will be entirely different.

This mission is like looping a Gemini capsule past the moon in the mid 60s. More stunt than step. Although maybe NASA could have tried out its tracking and communication systems with such a mission.