Life on Mars?
Jonathan McCrea
Life on Mars (Main)
Publication: Irish Times
Growing up on a small farm in Kildare, Joe Roche spent many clear nights gazing at the stars, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. He couldn’t have known that 20 years later, he would be undergoing a medical examination as part of the selection process for a manned mission to Mars. Last week, a private space exploration company called Mars One announced that it shortlisted 1058 applicants from 200,000 people who had applied to travel to Mars. Joe is the only Irishman on the list. The catch? If he goes, he can never come back.
If you think the whole thing sounds crazy, you wouldn’t be the first. Even the man behind Mars One (as the project is called) admits it’s a gargantuan task. Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch engineer and entrepreneur, aims to land a colony of four astronauts on the surface of Mars by 2025. Selected from a public open call last year, the successful applicants will undergo eight years of training while a number of robotic missions lay the infrastructure on a planet 225 million kilometres away.
While the idea of private space exploration isn’t new, establishing a colony on a planet we know very little about really would be a giant leap for mankind. Yet among all the issues a project like this presents, Lansdorp maintains that technology isn’t one of them. “No new inventions are required for this to happen. It’s largely the same technology that has been keeping humans alive for the past 11 years on the International Space Station that will keep our astronauts alive on Mars”, he says.
All going well, the first rover launch will take place in 2018. It will demonstrate the capability to extract water from Martian soil and test solar technology that will be used to power the colony’s hardware. It will also provide the first live webcam to stream video from another planet. Subsequent rovers will deliver payloads such as living quarters and life support units while back on earth, the first four astronauts prepare for lift-off in 2025. Getting to Mars is tricky; surviving on Mars is theoretically possible, but getting a crew back is a problem that has yet to be cracked. The technical feasibility of Mars One is greatly enhanced by the fact that these astronauts will never return to earth, and yet interestingly, it is not this aspect of the mission that has caused the most controversy.
“For some people it’s very scary, but …there are plenty of people that want to go to Mars and spend the rest of their lives there, to explore this strange new world. It’s very comparable to the early explorers when people migrated, even from Ireland, to Australia and America never to return. There’s a certain breed of people who dream about this, the true explorers among us.”
Roche, an astrophysicist who works at the Science Gallery in Dublin, knows all the risks and couldn’t agree more. “People assume that just because I want to go that I must not be happy here, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been very fortunate, I grew up in a great family and love my work. I think putting someone on Mars who has a full appreciation of life on earth is key to the mission’s success.”
The real question with Mars One concerns money. Lansdorp has estimated that the entire roadmap to get the first four colonists to the red planet is approximately $6bn. He plans to raise this partly through crowdsourcing via public donation drives, but mostly through television and sponsorship deals. Mars One will be a 24 hour reality TV show, with the public voting on which applicants get to travel.
“If you compare it to something that occurs regularly like the Olympic games – and I think this will be much bigger in in terms of audience -the total value in terms of marketing and sponsorship is about $4bn. I don’t think it’s that much money.”
While the idea of a Big Brother-style media frenzy surrounding something so monumental and dangerous as mankind’s first colony on another planet may sound ridiculous, a recent announcement has given the embers of credibility to Mars One.
In December, Lansdorp’s organisation announced that it has awarded a contract worth 250,000USD to Lockheed Martin to provide two concept studies in preparation for the first rover mission in 2018. “We’ve been involved in every American lander programme since the 1970s”, says Gary Napier, spokesperson for Lockheed Martin. “Our executives talked about Mars One and whether the whole thing was viable. The truth is, nobody knows. It’s the same with any startup technology like Apple computers or flat panel TVs, good ideas will build momentum and public interest and take off. If that happens, they probably have a reasonable chance of pulling it off”.
Does Roche take this whole project seriously? “Absolutely. The scientist in me has to be sceptical, but we’re in an unprecedented situation now where governments can’t afford to fund their own space programmes, and yet we have private organisations that do have the funds and the expertise to get us there. The last time the European space agency did a call for astronauts I was too young. Who knows when the next one is? This is the only thing I know of that has even a small chance of putting me in space.”