One-Way Mission to Mars Is Universe's Worst Job
Aspiring astronauts: run, don't walk, to sign up for NASA's vague new scheme to blast you off to Mars, never to return. Don't worry—they're doing it on the cheap!
The plan, which currently consists mostly of some sketches done by bored scientists on the back of their Trapper Keepers: to send a manned spacecraft with maybe four astronauts to Mars, where you would become "self-sufficient" and establish a "colony," but would never return to Earth. This "Hundred Year Starship" plan doesn't have any funding yet, but the scientists are pretty sure they can pull it off if they can just get some billionaires to donate the $10 billion or so they think it would cost. They ran this past Google's Larry Page."‘His response was, "Can you get it down to $1 [billion] or $2 billion?" So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price."
So again, the sign-up sheet for this corner-cutting bargain basement experimental never-to-return mission of doom is in the conference room.
