Yes, you read that correctly. They want to send some people to Mars – the planet – with the intention of never bringing them back.
The Mars One mission is the brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, who came forth with his plan in May of 2012. With a bold mission statement and the hopes of thousands of dreamers behind him, Mr. Lansdorp stated confidently that his goal was to send a group of four people (eventually 24) to Mars in order to colonize the planet by the year 2025.
He claimed that we will all eventually need somewhere to live once we destroy Earth, and he wanted to be the man that made this happen. The problem was that he had no real money to speak of, and he hoped to raise the necessary $6 billion through public donations and corporate sponsorships.
He also announced that he was turning the entire thing into a television reality show.
If your spider sense isn’t tingling right now, it should be – because there’s no possible way this could happen.
In the history of space travel, there have been over 40 unmanned trips to the red planet; half of those trips failed. Those trips had no passengers because the fact of the matter is that Mars is uninhabitable for humans. It has no atmosphere to speak of and is belted constantly by toxic radiation and dust storms that completely block out the sun for months at a time. According to research, the planet is completely barren of any sort of vegetation and is one huge landscape of mountain peaks, ice caps and deserts. Oh, I also need to mention Mars’ normal temperature. It’s a balmy minus 62 degrees Celsius – and you thought Moncton in February was bad.
Finally, and possibly the most damning piece of evidence, is the fact that sending a group of amateur astronauts to Mars for a price tag of $6 billion is ludicrous. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars less than any manned Mars mission ever proposed by NASA – you know, those guys who actually have a history of shooting people into space and not just some internet shyster looking to make his version of Survivor in space. One of my personal heroes, Commander Chris Hadfield, put his opinion into the mix when he was asked how Mars One could be doing this while admitting they haven’t even constructed a ship for the voyage yet. His response was clear and concise:
"If there are no specifications for the craft that will carry the crew, if you don’t know the very dimensions of the capsule they will be traveling in, you can’t begin to select the people who will be living and working inside of it… This is one of many fatal flaws in this entire endeavor."
If you’re not going to take the word of Commander Hadfield, the common sense train has left the station.
So why is this ruse continuing? Sadly, the response is two-fold. The first part of the response is that people will never stop dreaming. People always want to grasp what it just beyond their reach and if it weren’t for the dreamers of the world, we’d be lacking in many of the innovations and much of the progress we enjoy today. Dreamers are great and society needs them to function.
The second part, unfortunately, is that where you have dreamers you also have snake oil salesmen looking to capitalize on them. As of this writing, the Mars One debacle has only raised $760,000 of their $6 billion goal – with over $85,000 of that coming from Canada. Much of that money raised is from the ‘application fee’ (US $75) that everyone interested in taking the suicide mission to the stars had to pay up front to even be considered for the trip. Even though Mars One claims they are a not-for-profit entity, you can bet your bottom dollar that Mr. Lansdorp and his cronies are giving themselves a nice little salary for all their ‘research and development’.
This piece is just the tip of the iceberg, though. If you want an iron-clad thesis as to how and why this endeavor will never work, I encourage you to Google the piece ‘All Dressed Up For Mars with Nowhere to Go’ by Mr. Elmo Keep. It’s a fascinating (albeit lengthy) piece of writing debunking almost every aspect of this publicity stunt and is, unquestionably, the best article of dozens I have read on the subject.
To borrow from David Bowie, the world needs ‘Major Tom’ people; always curious about what lies just outside our stratosphere. The world also needs Ground Control, to bring Major Tom back to Earth; lest he be left floating helplessly in space in his tin can.
What the world doesn’t need is conmen like Bas Lansdorp.
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