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Who will first land a person on Mars?

This is for fun and purposes of experimentation. Assuming that a biological human arrives, alive, on Mars, will the responsible entity be:

  1. The US government

  2. SpaceX

  3. Another government

  4. Another corporation or private organization

  5. Other (somehow)

Although Metaculus does not yet have multi-ple choices, we do have multi-modes (up to 5), so just dial in the relative probabilities you want peaked around the above 5 choices. Granted, you'll have to eyeball the "weight" sliders until we add a better numerical readout.

Resolution will be determined by the organization for whom the person who makes the go/no go decision on setting the spacecraft down on Mars's surface, e.g. someone at NASA (or above NASA in the US government), someone at SpaceX (Musk or a successor), etc. This will remain true even if it is nominally a joint mission. Option 5 is for being taxied there by aliens, an individual building a wormhole in the basement, etc., NOT for ambiguity between 1-4, which will be instead handled via the question resolving as ambiguous.

Closes retroactively 1 month prior to the launch leading to the landing. Resolves ambiguous if nobody makes it to Mars by 2100.

Categories: Technology – Space

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