Dr. Richard Sylvan

Friday, May 2, 2008

Dr. Richard Sylvan passed away at the beginning of April.

Richard was passionate about helping people, obviously as a doctor. But, I knew him for his work in helping people move beyond the Earth, to open up new opportunities for the next generations on the next world, Mars, and beyond.

Richard was instrumental in the Mars Homestead project. He helped design our first Mars Settlement design, now called the Hillside Settlement, especially the medical facilities. He was very interested and knowledgeable, such as on the effects of radiation and gravity. And, he helped support the Mars Foundation and its Mars Homestead effort is several other ways, when it was most needed.

I had first met Richard through the Mars Society; he was especially active in the Political task force. His health was already not good, when we met. It took significant effort for him to travel, yet he loved to attend Mars and Space conferences to learn and spread his knowledge to others. I remember him as passionate, and as energetic as he was able to be given his health.

Richard also had good stories to tell from his past, I wish I had known Richard when he was younger.

Here is a photo of Richard (on right), explaining something to Matt Bowes, at a conference in 2004:
http://www.marshome.org/images2/displayimage.php?pos=-1527

Richard is 2nd from the right, in both of these photos of some of the members of the Mars Homestead programming team:
http://www.marshome.org/images2/displayimage.php?pos=-1794
http://www.marshome.org/images2/displayimage.php?pos=-1894

We don’t have an image of Richard’s work, but he laid out a medical room for the Mars Hillside Settlement, which is just around the corner to the left in this interior view (by Phil Smith):
http://www.marshome.org/images2/displayimage.php?pos=-3420

A service was held Wednesday, April 9, 2008, at 1:30 edt, in Boynton Beach, Florida. Richard resided in Atlanta and Florida.

- A message from Bruce Mackenzie, Co-Founder, Mars Foundation

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Virgle: Settling on Mars, Not Such a Crazy Idea

Friday, April 4, 2008

On April 1st, Google and Virgin announced their joint effort to begin colonizing Mars. On their project website, the apparent consortium was named "Virgle" (Virgin + Google just in case you didn't guess). On the homepage, Google declaired:

"For thousands of years, the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision." - Virgle mission statement

So it is for this reason we should think about a "Plan B", leave Earth and settle on Mars:

"An invitation. Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars." - Virgle mission statement

Virgle's main priority is to assemble a team of volunteers (you could apply online after filling out a light-hearted questionnaire) to create the first manned mission to Mars. But this manned mission would have one fundamental difference: it would be funded by two multi-billion dollar corporations. I mean, it's not hard to believe that a company might have an interest in space; Virgin Galactic is currently building their Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo for fee-paying customers to fly tourists into space by 2009. For a cool $200,000 you can reserve your ticket into space - Virgin has already sold tens of millions of dollars-worth of tickets.

Virgil is different, you can volunteer to help out, the "average man" can climb on board and be sent to Mars to help establish a Mars base... but hold on, there's a problem. It's April 1st, Google are known for their jokes, but surely Richard Branson isn't in on it as well? Yes, actually he is.

April Fools was alight with subtle jokes, elaborate pranks and untrue news with a serious edge, but the Virgle stunt was probably the biggest. I even had a go on the Universe Today space news website with a Mars-based article: "NASA to Burn Sponsor Logos on Mars", but it wasn't quite as elaborate as the Virgle project...

But is it actually that far fetched? The Mars Foundation has advanced designs for temporary and permanent bases, we are already in the advanced planning a designing phases. Our Hillside Base is in its final stages and our forthcoming Plains Base will be announced soon. Perhaps Google and Virgin have done something rather clever... could this be the biggest anti-April Fools ever? Read on...

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