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Exploration

People Want To Go To Mars – and Stay

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 7, 2013
Filed under

Meet the thousands of people ready to die on Mars, Ars Technica
“By now, Mars One has proven that there are sufficient number of people who don’t need to know any technical details for about the potential chance to live on Mars. Tens of thousands have plunked down cash to throw their would-be astronaut helmets into the ring without needing virtually any concrete information. But should space travel push come to reality entertainment shove, aren’t applicants at least a little afraid of–how to put this delicately–either a fiery space death or a frigid Martian death?”
78,000 sign up for one-way mission to Mars
“Just two weeks into the nineteen week application period, more than seventy-eight thousand people have applied to the Mars One astronaut selection program in the hope of becoming a Mars settler in 2023. Mars One has received applications from over 120 countries. Most applications come from USA (17324), followed by China (10241), United Kingdom (3581), Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India.”
Keith’s note: Looks like Mars One has eclipsed both Golden Spike and Inspiration Mars in terms of fundraising: 78,000 applications – ~$2 million in application fees.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

20 responses to “People Want To Go To Mars – and Stay”

  1. SpaceHoosier says:
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    This is, on the face of it, a complete farce. Nothing but a sad exploitation of some attention hounds. Instead of going to Mars in ten years, why not do this on the moon now? It will still require the same amount of life support but only a few days journey instead of months and probably cost around the same 6 billion that is underestimated (imo) for a Mars mission.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      I wish people wouldn’t talk about the Moon and Mars as if the only difference was in getting there. To survive in these two places involves two hugely different sets of problems to be solved. The only way that they could be considered even close to similar is if absolutely everything needed, for ever, was brought from Earth, immediately ready to use, which is not even remotely possible.

  2. Reynald Lescarbeau says:
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    So 78,000 x $30-$40 registration fee is over $2.5M. Considering their lack of funding and lack of details to their plan that’s pretty impressive.

    Inspiration mars in comparison seems exponentially more legit since they have actual engineering and at least some funding for now.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      Yeah, I think Inspiration Mars is 100 times more likely to actually get people near Mars. They have a much cheaper plan and much more financing.

      • Mader Levap says:
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        While they are more believable than Mars One scam, their plan have unrealistic schedule. They better start to think about 2031 already.

  3. Delta_v says:
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    This has nothing to do with actually going to Mars; this has much more to do with being the subject of the world’s attention for somewhat longer than 15 minutes.

    Fast forward to the cold hard reality of living and dying on Mars – I suspect most of those people will be looking for a ticket back.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Tell that to the hundreds boarding 35′ sailboats heading west in the seventeenth century.

      • Delta_v says:
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        Uh, in the 17th century life was about survival. Risk was everyday. The personal rewards were different. Success meant life.

        Now, we have twitter, the 24 hour news cycle and everyone wants to be on reality TV. $38 to have the opportunity to bask in the adoring eyes of the world as a “Mars astronaut”.

        Methinks the much starker reality of “life (death) on Mars” is the furthest thing from most applicants’ minds.

      • Jafafa Hots says:
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        The hundreds boarding sailboats had a reasonable expectation that there would be air to breathe where they were going, even food, game to hunt, life in some form.

        Notice they didn’t head out to colonize Antarctica.

  4. Tom Sellick says:
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    Hmmm… I’d check the validity of these three applicant names:

    Charles Brubaker
    John Walker
    Peter Willis

  5. Steve Whitfield says:
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    If you guys can look past your own preferences and assumptions for a moment, have you considered that other people might — for their own reasons — not see things the same ways as you do? The fact that you don’t agree with them, or with the people operating the program, doesn’t mean that it’s a farce, or not legitimate, or not intending to do what they claim.

    If you have doubts (as most of us may well do), fine, state them, as opinions. But you can’t express your opinions as if they were known facts. That’s what happened with the announcement of Inspiration Mars — shot down based on wrong assumptions. When more facts came out people had to back pedal. Now IM is being held up as a reference to measure against.

    I think we need to stay open-minded, because everyone has their own dreams and circumstances. I am one of the most conservative, out-right boring people you’ll ever meet, but I actually thought about applying for a couple of hours. The circumstances in my life (which I won’t discuss) make it more appropriate for me to go than someone younger who might yet change our world, whereas nothing much is likely to change whether I’m here on not. But on Mars, for a time, I might be able to make a difference. In the end I decided against it, but not because I thought it was dumb or pointless, but because I figured there were plenty of others signing up who could offer more in the way of capability and experience.

    Maybe this will all fall apart, or turn out to be a scam, but for now, I won’t be surprised if they actually send people — volunteers — one way to Mars. I’m guessing that their tripping point is going to be some do-gooder filing a legal injunction against them.

  6. James Johnston says:
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    The concept of going on a one way trip isn’t as crazy as it seems. A large number of the early European settlers people came to North America with no plans to return to where they came from. They – like the Pilgrims and a lot of others – came here to live or die in the new world. The challenges are different and a lot greater on Mars, of course, but the whole concept of going there without the ability to return is consistent with what a lot of our ancestors did.

    • Spaceman says:
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      This is perhaps the greatest fallacy of Mars colonization. It does not have any equivalence to the European colonization of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Why did Europeans travel to the new world – and are those reasons valid for travel to Mars?
      – In search of a better life: I’m willing to bet that 99.9% of the 78,000 signing up for this trip would NOT have a better life on Mars. In fact, if they are aware of Mars One, they probably have pretty cozy lives here on earth. People whose life could potentially be better in Mars are extremely unlikely of even thinking that travel to Mars is possible, much less knowing about Mars One.
      – In search of religious freedom (subset of the prior bullet): That could perhaps be achieved by travel to Mars, but for most people under religious oppression, it is a lot easier to simply emigrate to another country.
      – Hoping to get filthy rich: to my knowledge the are no reasonable concepts that would allow a Mars colonizer to get rich from resources on Mars. The moon and asteroids are much more resource rich; and the resources are easier to return to cis-earth space where they could actually be used.

      What are we left with for potential reasons to go to Mars?
      – Exploration: To my knowledge exploration for the sake of exploration was not a major driving factor in any European colonization ventures. Most exploration was squarely for “getting filthy rich”. This may be a valid motivation, but it certainly has no equal to the efforts of centuries past.
      – Fame: Ditto exploration.

      Maybe I need to re-read “Red Mars” and “Case for Mars”, but right now I’m with those who say that when the cold hard reality of a lonely death millions of miles away becomes apparent, the number of likely candidates will shrink very fast.

      • SpaceHoosier says:
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        Sorry…this may be trending a bit off topic, but I do think it is a relevant question as it pertains to future Mars colonization.

        Many of the proponents for Mars colonization point towards long term terra forming as a viable solution to providing a livable environment on the surface of Mars (not just under domes or underground in bubbles of air.) Pump the atmosphere full of hydro-carbons, thickening it, warming the surface and allowing for simple lichen, then more complex plant life to grow and convert CO2 into breathable oxygen. The warming also allows for Mars water to come to the surface in liquid form and enter the evaporation/rain cycle further contributing to the growing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere until, in a few hundred years, we have a habital new world for humans and wildlife.

        My question is this: Without a spinning liquid core providing a protective electromagnetic field shielding this new atmosphere from solar wind and radiation erosion as well as a lesser gravity well holding that atmosphere to the planet, what keeps any human-made atmosphere on Mars from going the way the original did billions of years ago? Doesn’t that make the whole point of terra forming a bit moot before even attempting it? Without an earth-like habitat, why would anyone want to colonize Mars with anything more than a few settlements or exploratory underground outposts?

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          You’re overlooking how long it took (according to theory) for the atmosphere to dissipate. It didn’t go all at once, but took many thousands of years, at least. That gives plenty of time for ongoing replenishment to offset to outgassing. Even if it did only last 10 or 20 thousand years, that’s still a long time for colonizing there.

          I think the barrier to terraforming is simply the generation and control of the vast amounts of energy that would be needed to implement the terraforming processes. This, I suspect, will determine when, if ever, terraforming Mars is doable.

          In the long run, even if we could produce a proper atmosphere on Mars, the hardest part is going to be introducing a suitable plant and animal ecosystem. It needs to be complex and, most importantly, self-sustaining. It can’t be plunked down all at once, but will have to be developed in stages over time in order for a sustainable food chain to come into existence. This is currently beyond human science, even though we know the basic requirements.

          Part of the ecosystem problem will be turning the various types of regolith (dead dirt, if you prefer) into live soil, complete with aerating insects and microorganisms, that will grow plants. Without this we have no food crops and no way to feed the animals. So one of the early steps will be to determine and catalog the chemical makeup of the regolith in all the areas of the planet, which by itself is a big job.

          Terraforming is often depicted as just supplying an Earth-type atmosphere and large amounts of water, but it’s unfortunately much more complicated than that.

          • SpaceHoosier says:
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            Thanks, Steve for the info! I still wonder about the effects of solar radiation. An atmosphere will protect the surface only so much, but without a magnetic field, any life we introduce on the planet will need lots of time to evolve natural barriers to the increased radiation.
            I apologize to all if I come off as being anti-Mars. I’m not at all. I just fret over putting all of our HSF eggs into a single basket to get to Mars when I think it more prudent to focus our attention and limited resources on cheaper ways to get to LEO and gradually expand our presence BEO in a way that is practical and easily repeatable.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            I agree with you completely on both issues.

            The problem I see is that a progressive capability and expansion outward is logical and obvious, and has been since before Gagarin, yet no country has taken that obvious approach. Politics overrides logic every time. The Chinese space program, so far, is much closer to that logical progression. Perhaps they’ve learned from other country’s mistakes. But then again, they don’t do near as much space science as the rest.

            As for solar radiation on Mars, it’s a problem that’s going to have to be solved no matter where off Earth people end up living, yet it hasn’t been given much attention R&D-wise. I have to wonder whether it’s just being overlooked in favor of other things (like big rockets) or it’s on the back burner because no one has any ideas to investigate.

  7. SpaceHoosier says:
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    What exactly IS the point of this? If not to scam thousands of people out of 40 bucks then what? To prove 4 people can survive a 6 month space voyage and then a (short) lifetime of near abandonment on a dead, hostile world? As I stated, you can do the same thing on the moon and actually get some worthwhile science and long term data towards building an off-Earth human settlement out of it (if that is what you REALLY want) with the possibility of bringing the people back in an emergency. I just don’t like the idea of sending people needlessly to their deaths, even if some think it is for the good of reality television. This sounds too much like Survivor: Mars.
    IMO, get it right on the moon first, THEN try and settle on Mars. I think I’m looking at this from the standpoint of acheiving something meaningful, not for shameless hype.

  8. Vic_Seratonin says:
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    Mars One does seem exploitative and very unlikely, to say the least. But let’s not pretend to know that all who’ve signed up are simply attention seekers, or that they want to be on some dumb reality TV show. They’re just as likely to be rejecting all that as trivial, and thinking about the longer term goals of human existence. These numbers are serious and they are global. Sure – on a planet of 7 Billion, a tiny tiny fraction, but it will probably grow. I’m suggesting we’re seeing the beginnings of an historic shift in the general attitude of our species to Mars. Thousands of people around the world are now seriously considering (ie not fantasizing) what it would mean to live there.

  9. Anonymous says:
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    I wonder about the astrobiological implications of dead bodies on Mars. We only get to study a pristine Mars once, once we sully it we sully it forever. I wouldn’t support anything like Mars One until we have studied Mars sufficiently to ensure we’ve done at least the 80/20 on the astrobiological end.