Ah yes, the "let's fix our problems here at home first" argument. I hate to break it to you, but we will always have problems. Humans have always had problems and we excel at finding new ones no matter how many old ones we solve. We can either choose to keep working at fixing them, for billions of years as we colonize the universe, or we can wait for the next extinction event in a much shorter time span and have a permanent solution.

I'm imagining a caveman not so long ago saying that we shouldn't cross that river until we figure out how to live off the resources in a one-hour walking radius around our cave.

You know what would really advance our ability to live here on Earth? Figuring out how to live in environments totally hostile to our way of life. Terraforming another planet will teach us how to live in balance with nature here. Learning how to conserve and recycle resources on another world, where we have no choice but to do so, will help us be sustainable on Earth. You clearly look at this as a win-lose proposition. Money spent on space exploration is money not spent here at home. But the fact is, space exploration helps us here at home. It helps our economy, it gives us new technologies that work here just as well on Earth, it does a lot.

What exactly is the scam? It's a non-profit organization, the risks are well known, and if it all blows up nobody's a winner. Well, the only winners will be the ones who learn from what went wrong and do a better attempt next time.

And whose credibility, exactly, will be harmed if this doesn't work? Another group trying the exact same thing you'd also disapprove of for the same reasons you disapprove of Mars One? Surely, this wouldn't harm the credibility of another company with a much larger budget and longer timeline and different method of funding, or a government attempt for that matter.

The difference between you and I is that I don't know if it will work. You seem convinced there's no point in even trying. You're like somebody saying a ship will fall off the edge of the world if they sail off beyond the horizon. I'm saying, let's go find out.

Virgin is a for-profit company concerned very much with image. Their business model is entirely based around getting people back to Earth again safely. They're inherently risk-averse, because their passengers are paying to get home again.

NASA and other world space agencies lack the political support to do much of anything at all, and they are even more risk-averse than a company is, because what little support they do get is the result of a fickle public that's terrified of dead astronauts.

It seems to me, Mars One is a different beast entirely. It's a one way trip, and they seem very up front about the risk. I'm sure all 1058 volunteers in the second round are keenly aware they may die at any stage in this experiment, and have accepted that risk. It's a privately-funded, non-profit entity that doesn't need to worry about public approval, just public interest.

As for figuring it all out, we've known how to get to Mars for decades now. We've made great strides in landing technology, and awareness of radiation exposure with the latest Mars rover, among other missions. Their efforts to build the habitation structures on Mars will happen before they ever launch a live colonist, so if they can't do it, nobody will even be put at risk. Regardless of outcome, we'll have learned a great deal, found out where our limits are, and maybe pushed them a bit further.

Frankly I'm fed up with the complacency of this species, at everyone's willingness to just stay put on our fragile little world, and never try anything hard or dangerous. At least these guys are trying. Maybe they're naive, maybe they've under-budgeted and this will cost a lot more than they think, maybe things will go wrong, maybe some brave explorers will die. At least they'll have found where our limits are, instead of just guessing and naysaying when somebody thinks they can do better than those who came before.

I assume, like absolutely everything else humans have ever done before, it will go over budget.

So, if it goes over budget, you still think it's impossible?

How exactly, does it reek of a scam? The technology has existed for decades, and in recent years we've learned a lot more. The only reason we haven't done it already is because NASA lacks the political support, and the public is terrified of even the slightest risk.

Even in failure, Mars One will teach us things we didn't know before, and lay the groundwork for future endeavors. If this isn't a worthy goal, I don't know what is. If they succeed, all the better.

What I don't understand is the people saying they shouldn't even try. I'm just glad our ancestors didn't think that way.

At least they're keeping this in the news, in the public consciousness. I get depressed at how little interest there seems to be in trying the hard things, in sending humans farther away than they've ever gone before, in breaking speed records, in exploring new frontiers.

Will Mars One work? I hope so, with ever fiber in my being. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but either way it will advance human knowledge, and maybe push our limits just a little bit further. What I don't understand is the people saying they shouldn't even try.

Realty show has a bad connotation to it. It's more like a documentary program.

Anyway, I'll never understand why people are such naysayers about Mars One, especially on sites like Slashdot. At the very least, they are keeping extraterrestrial colonies in the public consciousness, something we should be celebrating. Even if this project ends up with some fatalities, name one human migration that didn't result in some deaths, or one exploration mankind has undertaken that wasn't risky. Early efforts of course are going to be dangerous, perhaps unwise, but if we were too scared to take risks we'd still all be living in African treetops.

Presumably because this is only the second round. They had to eliminate 200,000 something crazies.

Yeah, okay. That's much more reasonable. Four astronauts blasting off for Mars in 2018, as awesome as that'd be, just makes no sense.

You know, I want to believe this will happen, but I really can't. I don't mean the Mars One thing, in general, just the timeline of it. 2018 is crazy.

A lot of these names probably come off of random word lists, to help disguise the purpose in case foreign agents learn of a code name.

In some cases, the weakening of encryption standards done by the NSA, and various backdoors they've managed to install in systems used by everyone, there may be foreign and criminal organizations that are simply riding the NSA's coattails to compromise your security in the exact same manner.

But you're right, if the NSA has been doing this, so has everyone else. The NSA is just better funded.

Seeing as how it's the binary you're running, what's the difference? If a company is compromised, they're screwed. People won't buy their software again, they'll know to stop using it. This should make companies careful, and if they're not, they'll get in trouble soon enough. Some anonymous party puts up a clever back door in a patch, what is a user to do then? Whose reputation is damaged?

I am by no means claiming closed source is more secure than open source, I'm saying they're equally insecure. I'm also saying, that at least with closed source, you know who to blame when something goes wrong.

The company selling the closed source software is where the code came from. It's their responsibility, it's their business and reputation on the line, and if they're using libraries they didn't develop in-house, it's their job to know how those work too. If they do something bad (and really, it's not that hard to tell if some software is leaking data or accessing files it shouldn't), they'll be the ones held responsible.

By its very nature, open source code can be manipulated by anyone, with potentially ulterior motives. A company can accidentally hire a foreign agent or an NSA plant, but if they do, and it gets out, that company will be held responsible.