The problem is not just getting donors it is getting a donor that someone is willing to use. Would you want a child who is genetically related to your average MP?

That was my point: there will still be a time mis-calculation but instead him thinking it was 81 days and it turning out to be 80 because of the Earth's rotation he will think it took 80 days when actually it took 81 due to time dilation (if he goes fast enough).

Well if they sell their farm here on Earth they will probably have enough money but I absolutely agree that the plan is somewhat overly ambitious.

Only really as a research project which provides a dietary supplement. The fact remains that the vast majority of people on the bases do not spend all the time attempting to grow food. This would not be the case on Mars.

...only the twist is that thanks to time dilation while Fogg thought it only took 80 days it actually took 81 in solar system's reference frame so he actually lost the bet.

True but that is because nobody on an antarctic base spends their time trying to grow things (unless that is part of their science project). If you have everyone on the base dedicating all their time to growing food, finding resources, making repairs etc. you will probably need far fewer resources to support the base. This is impractical in Antarctica because it is cheaper to ship the food there than to support even more people living there who try to grow food themselves.

However I do agree that this proposal seems rather optimistic but the task is so amazingly hard that I expect that any Mars colonization mission will always appear overly optimistic until one actually succeeds.

Ok it should not be a problem to name some then should it? Please pick some that are in faculty positions at reputable universities though because when I have spoken with my colleagues over in geophysics and earth and atmospheric sciences not one of them has raised any doubts whatsoever that the mean temperature of the planet is increasing. There IS debate about the level mankind's contribution to the increase but absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the temperature is increasing....and before you go off the deep end about funding conspiracies etc. a lot of these people receive grants from the oil industry so if anything they would have a bias against global warming.

So apologies if I take the word of world experts in the field over a random guy on slashdot who has provided absolutely zero evidence to back up his claims. For example what evidence do you base your claim that only 4% of the world's CO2 is from humans? This plot shows a 25+% increase in the level since 1960. What natural process has caused such a rapid yet steady rise in CO2 over that period? I'm more than willing to keep an open mind about the causes but it seems very plausible that human CO2 emissions caused this increase and I've not heard of any natural process that could account for it. If you want to convince people you need to explain the data. Just stating what you believe and shouting at anyone who disagrees is not how science works.

Look up vacuum bellows tube. Obviously this would only provide a limited range of extension but it should be enough to last quite a few years given the length of pipe involved. Of course you would also have to scale them up which would undoubtedly produce some technical challenges but probably nothing unsurmountable if you have the money.

I'd be happier if the meagre details they do post were at least correct. If one fifth of a ream is 100 sheets then 200 reams is 100,000 sheets not 10,000 as the summary states.

Actually you can make more time: you just need to make the world go faster but extracting carbon from the air is probably easier.

Actually it is fiscally impractical, not physically impractical. You could physically build a vacuum tube-based maglev train where the tube is at some depth in the ocean to avoid surface issues and plate boundary problems. However the costs when people look at these things are utterly insane...but in theory it is physically practical to build such a thing.

Given the MPs we have a better slogan would be: "Cheaters may later become law makers".

If using conventional fuel then you are right. However unlike physical fuel electrical power can be transmitted wirelessly. Of course the technical challenges to do this would be immense for a moving vehicle but it does present a possible option not available to traditionally fuelled vehicles. However given all the challenges with current technology I would agree with your conclusion that Uber is very unlikely to crack this but it remains an intriguing possibility that at some point someone else might.

That is actually far less rational though so my apologies for giving creationists too much credit. So what you are saying is that they believe evolution happens but that despite the fact that this evolution could explain the entire fossil record they reject that idea and believe that the world was created by someone with a heck of a sense of humour because they went to all the trouble to create fossils consistent with evolution? I have a hard time believing that anyone really believes this: it seems far more probable that this is a rationalization they use to let them support measures against diseases without having to publicly admit they are wrong.

I don't know *any* scientist who disagrees with the fact that the planet is warming. Where the disagreement lies is in the degree of the warming that is being caused by human activity. What we need to have a is a sensible debate about how we can start to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while the science figures out how much we need to reduce it by.

Instead we have an inflammatory debate with one side refusing to admit there is any problem at all (despite the overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming) and the other side responding with equally non-scientific doomsday-like scenarios. The result is deadlock and inaction when instead we need to start taking sensible, measured actions now to avoid a situation where we need to take very significant, rapid actions which could cause huge economic upheaval.