* Space program looking for volunteers
* Program aimed at settling other worlds
* Astronauts would not be brought home

IT'S the biggest dead-end job ever.

NASA is looking for volunteers to fly to Mars - the snag is that you won't come back.

It is actively investigating the possibility of humans colonising worlds such as the Red Planet.

The settlers would be sent supplies from Earth but would go on the understanding that it would be too costly to bring them home.

NASA revealed that it had already received more than $1 million to commence work on the project at its Ames Research Centre in California.

Centre director Pete Worden, who claimed humans could be living on Mars by 2030 despite the inhospitable conditions, said: "The human space program is now aimed at settling other worlds.

"Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars or get fired."

Mr Worden told a conference in San Francisco that he had discussed with Google co-founder Larry Page the potential for one-way trips to Mars.

Scientists say much of the cost of such a mission is associated with bringing the astronauts home - the price of sending 20 Mars settlers with a one-way ticket would be equal to bringing four astronauts back.

Experts say a nuclear-fuelled rocket could make the journey in four months.

Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is the most likely to have substantial quantities of water, making it the best bet for sustaining life.

But it is a forbidding place to set up home. Temperatures plummet way below freezing in some parts.

The thin atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, so oxygen supplies are a must.

Mr Worden suggested that new technologies, such as synthetic biology and alterations to the human genome, could be explored ahead of the mission.

Writing in the Journal of Cosmology, scientists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies envisaged sending four volunteer astronauts on the first mission to colonise Mars.

A one-way human mission to Mars would not be a fixed-duration project as in the Apollo program, but the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet, they said.

This is foolish, the probability of failure is too high and if it fails it might set back future attempts at colonization.

Space station, with lots of people and no time limits on remaining there (without having to exercise 20 hours a day) you incompetent slugs (NASA not you guys). Succeed at that and you can colonize planets at leisure (save transportation).

The thing is that eventually we are going to have to take the risk and dedicate ourselves to the project. There is going to be a lot of risk no matter when we do it because we can only hedge against so many potential mishaps and at some point we are going to have to just do it. I think we should send robots capable of construction there first and build some shit first. That way we can build a self contained city by the time we actually want to put people in it.

Stuffed:

All it would take is one man, with the potential to be a serial killer, to mess everything up. Look at it this way, besides the mass humping program going on when they get there, dudes and dudettes will be as bored as a rock. Then somebody is going to slip up and sleep with the crazy guy's wife/humpbuddy, then snap...death and mayhem on mars.

Bottom line, send plenty of entertainment if this is going to happen or one guy will go bat shit crazy and NASA will have to restart the whole program.

Maybe put a low level of antidepressants in the water supply.

People would protest to that.

I know a girl who even said that anti-depressants were bad.

Getting volunteers might not be hard, and astronauts might not be too difficult to produce with time, but astronauts willing to hit a dead-end mission like this might be something else completely.

On topic, instead of copping out of cleaning the mess on this planet, we should not be concerned with ruining another one so soon.

I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

I tend to agree with Agent Smith's notion that humanity is a virus.

I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

I'm not trying to persuade or dissuade anyone. Simply contributing my opinion to the discussion.

If I were, more people would be familiar with the motion picture media, I would argue.

I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

So is Rival one of those contrarians that think that everything out of hollywood that is popular is shitty?

Yay Kant, although me and him disagree on certain aspects of altruism.

I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.