Post by sherryjo crandall on Sept 21, 2005 17:03:36 GMT -5
Company wants settlers on Mars
Wednesday, 21 September, 2005
All companies set goals, but newly formed 4Frontiers is eyeing some expansive horizons. The company's mission: to open a small human settlement on Mars within 20 years or so. Sure, it may sound far-fetched. And the company's initial plans are a lot more terrestrial than ethereal, like developing a 25,000-square-foot replica of a Mars settlement here on Earth, then charging tourists admission.But the people behind the venture are quite serious -- as serious as the $25 million they want to raise from investors. CEO Mark Homnick, a former manager for Intel who has registered 4Frontiers in Florida, says he has already raised "a couple million" from people he won't name. He hopes for an initial public offering within five years. That still leaves a lot of questions: Why should people live on Mars? And if it's going to be done, should a private enterprise engage in what would be one of humanity's defining moments? Besides, what's in it for investors? Homnick and his co-founders -- a longtime Mars aficionado named Bruce Mackenzie and a 25-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology master's student, Joseph Palaia -- are ready with several answers. First, they contend, humankind needs a new frontier to explore, with all the intellectual and engineering challenges that homesteading Mars would present. Also, who knows the fate of our humble Earth? Will we meet an early end at the hands of an asteroid, warfare, disease or some other catastrophe?
In that case, we'd sure be glad civilization had been preserved by some colonists on Mars -- and perhaps elsewhere in the galaxy, if all goes well on the Red Planet. That broader vision of space settlement gives 4Frontiers its name: the frontiers being the Earth, the moon, Mars and the asteroids. "It's the nature of life -- life tries to expand and tries to adapt," Mackenzie says. "If there's a forest fire in one valley, then all of the organisms in the next valley will slowly creep over the ridge and repopulate that valley. Any species that don't do it eventually die out." Going to space, he believes, is as if "all of earth's life, acting together, is trying to get into the next valley. And the only way we can do it is by building rockets."
for full article
www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,68898,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_8