A One-Way Ticket

A one-way ticket is 80% cheaper than round-trip...that is, if you are headed for Mars.

"A human mission to Mars is technologically feasible, but hugely expensive," say scientists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies. They have a solution: Don't bother planning for a return trip to Earth. A one-way trip would be attainable in the near future. While the scientists are not volunteering themselves, they say that they have had many volunteers. Personally, I know a few people I'd like to send to Mars.

In case you are interested, here's the itinerary: "You and a stranger would board a spacecraft and travel for six months — absorbing levels of radiation so high that your reproductive organs would be destroyed — before arriving at your new planet. There you would live in an ice cave, or perhaps inside a biosphere adjoining a cave, for the rest of your life (which, incidentally, would be 20 years or less). Two other Earth ex-pats would arrive in their own craft, and together the four of you would prepare a home for 150 more people, most of whom would arrive decades after your death."

One commenter noted, "Actually preparing a place for only 150 is just 385 too few. There are 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 United States Senators."