Mars One has inspired excitement, disbelief, and ridicule in equal measure. If founder Bas Lansdorp can raise the money, Mars One could yet inspire a generation "We have, or will acquire, the basic knowledge to solve all the physical problems of a [manned] flight to Mars."
Nasa legend Wernher von Braun, "the father of rocket science",
wrote those words in 1954, almost 60 years ago. Today, a manned mission to Mars still remains a distant dream.
But perhaps not for much longer.
If Dutch upstart Mars One defies the odds, and it's a big if, four members of the public will land on Mars in 2023. They will be celebrities, their lives documented from the moment they were chosen as candidates for the mission. A prebuilt habitat will be waiting for them and they will look back at the tiny blue dot in the sky and realise the magnitude of their decision to take Mars One founder Bas Lansdorp's one-way ticket. Perhaps they'll send a tweet.
That all remains hypothetical. The Apollo Moon missions remain Earth's greatest triumph in human space exploration. Sadly they proved to be the peak of, rather than the foundation for, manned spaceflight beyond Earth's orbit. No successor to the programme materialised, and in the mid-90s, with the Cold War receding into distant memory, the Clinton administration hammered the final nail into the coffin of manned space exploration.
[pullquote source="Bas Lansdorp]
The old guard, the national agencies and aerospace industry, continued to push the limits of engineering, ingenuity and science with unmanned satellites, probes, and rovers; Curiosity's innovative [link url="https://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-04/11/nasas-new-mars-rover"]sky-crane[/link] landing system is a recent example. But the space age that inspired a generation was dead.
Until now.
Private companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have fired the starting gun on a new era of space exploration. One in which wealthy individuals are setting the agenda and refusing to accept the idea that space exploration should be left to robots.
Not only does SpaceX's unmanned Dragon space rocket now supply the International Space Station, but with every test of their vertical takeoff and landing Grasshopper rocket, SpaceX founder Elon Musk's dream of dying on Mars, but "not on impact", comes inexorably closer.
But from the shadows of these giants has emerged Mars One. An underdog founded in 2011, the non-profit organisation has no track record in space, but has a hugely ambitious plan to send humans to Mars within ten years. After the first humans land, more will be sent every two years. There has been excitement, but there has also been ridicule. "People expect the organisation that will organise a mission to Mars to be an established aerospace company," says Bas Lansdorp in an interview with Wired.co.uk. "But they aren't going to do it.
They haven't done it in the last 50 years."
But it isn't only Mars One's inexperience that has left some sceptical -- it's their tone. Lansdorp has been unafraid to say that he wants to send people to Mars because it would be " more cool" than the Moon. (He admits his phrasing was "not elegant").
The project has been talked up in terms of its media appeal -- his description of a human mission to Mars being "the most exciting story that you can tell" is quite some distance from the lofty rhetoric John F. Kennedy employed when he announced the Apollo programme: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."
Perhaps the harshest criticisms came in a Reddit AMA in June 2012, during which some Redditors called the entire project a hoax, and Lansdorp avoided answering the most upvoted and visible questions.
[Quote"]The aerospace industry aren't going to organise a manned mission to Mars. They haven't done it in the last 50 years[/pullquote] "That was actually my first time on Reddit," he admits, explaining that he was answering newly submitted questions and didn't realise there were "top" questions until later. Proving once again that people wishing to promote their project on Reddit should do their homework before diving headlong into the swamp.
Lansdorp's plan involves contracting out every part of the mission to an industry partner, and funding the adventure by selling broadcasting rights for every stage of process -- from selection to landing, a journey of at least seven years, every part of the astronaut's involvement will be documented. He says that candidates will be chosen, in part, for their willingness to tell the story of the mission: "if they are not interested in being in the picture, or even if they dislike it, then they won't make it through our seven-year training programme."
The idea has drawn comparisons with Big Brother-style reality TV, not least because the creator of Big Brother, Paul Romer, is an ambassador for Mars One.
Lansdorp, however, rejects the characterisation. "The true meaning of reality TV has nothing to do with the reality TV that's currently on TV, because that has nothing to do with reality," he says. "I think you could argue that the images have had a much bigger effect than anything else that had to do with the Apollo project. We have the same responsibility to show the world what we are doing."
The experiences of Felix Baumgartner, whose high-altitude jump was the most streamed event in history, and space celebrity commander Chris Hadfield should give Mars One some hope that there is demand for adventures at the final frontier.
Lansdorp says he's already had interest from a major US broadcaster, but as yet the plan to fund the mission partly through the sale of broadcasting rights remains just that, a plan.
And the mission he's proposing is no less than one of the most dangerous missions humankind has ever undertaken.
6 million ways to die, choose one
Though Mars may have once been as hospitable as a bar where everybody knows your name, that's no longer the case. Mariner 4's flyby of the planet in 1965 put paid to the dreams of scientists and sci-fi writers that life might exist on Mars.
It's a barren wasteland. Any water that may have once flowed across the surface is now frozen at the poles or lost to space. Gravity is less than half as strong as on Earth and atmospheric pressure is less than one percent of Earth's and consists of 95 percent carbon dioxide. Though much thinner than Earth's atmosphere, it's enough to kick up hazardous dust storms and make landing on the planet tricky. "The Moon was easy," says Doug Millard, Deputy Keeper, Technologies & Engineering at the Science Museum. "In as much as there is next to no atmosphere [...] which means that there is far less to go wrong when you descend to the surface." Mars isn't so forgiving, as the failed British mission Beagle 2 discovered in 2003.
It lacks a protective magnetic field, so deadly solar and galactic radiation reaches the surface virtually unimpeded; a problem any would-be astronauts would also need to contend with on the eight-month journey to the planet. "The pattern of death from acute radiation sickness is about as unpleasant as you could imagine," says Lewis Dartnell, Astrobiology research fellow at the UK Space Agency. "You basically vomit and diarrhoea yourself to death. Imagine that inside a cramped confined spaceship, in zero gravity; it doesn't bear thinking about".
An alien bursting from your chest mid-way through breakfast isn't the worse thing that can happen to you in space, it seems.
Cataracts of the eye, weakening to the immune system, and damage to the nervous system are just some of the possible, unknown risks astronauts on Mars could face if not protected from radiation properly, adds Dartnell. All of that is not including the adverse effects of reduced or zero gravity and the mental challenges associated with spending months on end in a tiny box, hurtling through space. "Trying to do something like this, too early and too quickly, before we really have a good handle on how to do it successfully would be risky," says Dartnell, who is sceptical about the project. "And I think there would be a lot of people surprised if it actually ever launches when they say it will launch."
it's certainly not our biggest concern."
With regards to radiation, a Mars One spaceship would include a hollow water tank for use as a radiation shelter, with "25-40 cm of water as radiation protection", says Lansdorp, and on Mars they would initially cover the habitats with "one or two metres of
[Martian soil]" to protect against radiation.
But a mission to Mars will never be a walk in the park. "It's a risky adventure, and we will have to reduce the risk as much as possible," says Lansdorp. "But it will always be safer to stay home."
Who would live on a planet like this? So far over 78,000 people from 120 countries have decided that going to Mars would be way more awesome than staying at home.
According to a Mars One press release, the US (17324), China (10241) and the UK (3581) have the most applicants.
Though even those numbers have been questioned. 78,000 applicants simply means the number of people who have signed up with their email address, date of birth, and country of residence. The number of people who have actually gone beyond that free step and paid an average of $38 (£24) to complete their registration could be anywhere between around 600 (the number of online videos) and 78,000. "It is only logical that many people are still working on their profiles," says Lansdorp, adding that "Mars One chooses not to distinguish between people at different stages of their application". He argues that not paying the fee doesn't necessarily mean an applicant doesn't want to go to Mars.
Lansdorp hopes to have half a million fully paid applicants before the end of the process, raising around €15 million (£12.7 million), which will help to fund the selection process.
One of the many thousands of applicants is 25-year-old Erica Meszaros, a software developer from Michigan, US. "Before I got married I used to tell my husband that he was my one true love, after Mars," she says, only half-joking. "I don't want to leave Earth forever, I want to go to Mars more than I want to stay on Earth."
Hers is more than a casual passing interest. She has interned at the Jet Propulsion Lab at Nasa, and volunteers for two space advocacy organisations, Space Advocates and SpaceUnited.
[pullquote source="Erica Meszaros]
She's realistic about her chances of winning a place, "The sheer odds make my candidacy unlikely. Although I am in the peak of my physical health, I have family history of illness," says Meszaros. "I have to imagine that Mars One is smart enough to take that into account while choosing their astronauts".
Do the dangers scare her? "Yeah, I'm more than a little scared," she admits. "But! I'm untrained and a little scared.
There are definitely dangers associated in going to Mars, but with the right training I am totally willing to face them".
The question of Mars One's ethical responsibilities to the people it proposes to send to Mars is a tricky one. Who's accountable for the safety of the people Mars One wants to blast off into space?
The only duty on the carriers [in the US] is to provide sufficient information so that the travellers are able to give
'informed consent'," explains Christopher J. Newman, Senior Lecturer in Law at Sunderland University. "But you can guarantee, of course, that with the first tragedy there will be litigation to test this law and only then will we really know the scope of the duty on private carriers."
I ask Bas where he thinks Mars One's responsibilities begin and end. "Mars one has to select the right people to do this, it has to inform the people of all the risks, and design, together with our suppliers, a mission that is as safe as possible," he says. "But
[...] the applicants will need to make the decision, do I think it's worth the risk or not?"
Legal responsibilities aside, the moral responsibility will no doubt be laid at his door if a disaster were to occur. Is he ready to handle that? "I think you're never really ready to deal with that sort of responsibility," he says. "It would be something that would hurt me deeply".
If you have no money, you're not going to Mars The fact remains that Mars One doesn't currently have the money to pull off this incredible feat. Can an organisation that admitted as recently as 11 months ago that they weren't taking private donations " until we have [...] an accountant" really raise the capital needed? (The comment, Lansdorp says, was merely an admission that they had to build credibility before seeking donations).
"We can say that we have enough funding to do the things we want to do in 2013 at this moment," says Lansdorp, who declined to say how much Mars One had raised so far. He claims that the entire mission can be organised using existing technology and will cost $6 billion, though he won't discuss how much each stage of the mission will cost.
A Dutch entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, Lansdorp sold his shares in his previous company Ampyx to fund the startup of Mars One. He won't go into details, but says that he invested a "substantial percentage" of his wealth in Mars One. (Ampyx declined to be interviewed for this story.)
Thus far only one contractor has entered into an official relationship with Mars One:Paragon Space Development Corporation, a life support systems company based in Arizona. "We're contracted with them right now to do an initial life support system study," says Paragon President Jane Poynter.
[Quote"]There are definitely dangers associated in going to Mars, but with the right training I am totally willing to face them[/pullquote]
Mars One is also in contact with Astrobotic, a Pennsylvania robotics company that's on course to send a rover to the Moon in 2015 -- "Mars One can be that mission that begins the settlement of Mars," says President John Thornton.
Among the other prospective suppliers listed on the Mars One website is UK-based Satellite Systems Technology Ltd -- "we had preliminary discussions with the Mars One team last year [...] but we have not been engaged to take this further yet" -- and SpaceX -- "SpaceX does not currently have a relationship with Mars One."
Bas says he hopes to close deals with two more companies by the end of May or early June 2013 and that "for all the components of our mission, at least one company under contract before the end of summer 2013."
Mars One has an array of credible scientists advising the mission, including Chris McKay, planetary scientist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, who has been investigating the possibility of a manned mission to Mars since the 80s. He was sanguine about the challenge, "I am not sure [if Mars One will be a] success but if we don't try we will certainly not succeed."
However, without money, Bas Lansdorp won't even get to try.
Critics of Mars One pointed out during the Reddit AMA that the core team was targeted more towards marketing the project rather than how you get a human being to Mars safely.
It was a misguided criticism. Mars One is no more, or less, than an umbrella brand for bringing together the cream of private industry for a heroic human endeavour. It's a similar model to the one that took man to the Moon.
If Lansdorp can raise the money, and he'll need all the marketers he can get to do it, there's ultimately little stopping him paying some of the most intelligent people on the planet to work on his mission. "If you have all the top engineers in the world, but if you have no money, then you're not going to Mars," says Lansdorp.
And that, in a nutshell, is the biggest thing that stands between Mars One and history.
Illustrations: Ken Iizuka
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
