[X] My Assistant

[ustrax]

Yes, the title says it all.
What would be the major benefits of a mission, let's say, to Mars, with a single crew member.
The reduce of weight would one major issue, I guess.
Of course it would have to be someone extremely ultra prepared to correspond to the mission demandings, someone covering areas such as geology, biology not to say the technical issues concerning a spaceflight...
Against? Isolation?...
Maybe by reducing the mission to the minimal accepted period and inducing long periods of sleep during the voyage...
Are there any available studies regarding this matter? All the things I've read point to a >1 crew, I would like to see something discussing the one man possibility.

[ngunn]

I agree any space agency proposing a suicide mission would get fried politically. However the idea of a one-person mission raises the intriguing possibility that the solitary crew might undergo some sort of mental process (voices? visions? messianic revelation?) on the trip and simply refuse to return.

[ustrax]

I agree any space agency proposing a suicide mission would get fried politically. However the idea of a one-person mission raises the intriguing possibility that the solitary crew might undergo some sort of mental process (voices? visions? messianic revelation?) on the trip and simply refuse to return.

I was saying I would go but not on a one man mission...
About what you're saying we shared some ideas some time ago...

[ngunn]

I was saying I would go but not on a one man mission...
About what you're saying we shared some ideas some time ago...

Thanks, that was indeed an interesting discussion which I did not follow at the time. On a related point an interesting paper on Martian sky colours which was linked somewhere here recently (I'll find it if you want) included speculation that the buff-to-blackish sky tones might induce depression in humans. At any rate the psychological perspective cannot be ignored and would be even more unpredictable and problematic on a one person mission where all the psychological eggs are in one basket, as it were. For that reason alone I doubt if it will be tried.

[ustrax]

(I'll find it if you want)

Yes, please.
I agree that a solo mission might bring some psychological surprises but...can't a crew of several develop the same problems, the same sense of mission?...Agravated by the fact that you'll have to deal with different personalities...Competition, sexual instincts...
There's difficulties in them all, our mission, as species, is to overcome them...