Fancy a one way trip to Mars

Would you take a one-way trip to Mars?

Op-Ed: A Dutch company is planning to establish a colony on Mars beginning in 2024.  They sent out queries for applicants to participate in a project to inhabit the Red Planet for the rest of their lives. It’s a one-way ticket with no returning to Earth. Would you do it?

Before you answer, consider this:  No more financial worries, no more career ponderings or changes, retirement completely covered, guaranteed income for life—as long it lasts, which some predict will be a short life span.  One would also relinquish family associations, which could include never seeing children again.  Would the positives outweigh the negatives? 

Apparently 200,000 applicants believed it was a chance of a lifetime and sent the Dutch company applications. The field of applicants has been narrowed to 100, and they will go on to further testing later this year, which is expected to include team-building exercises and later, isolation to test their psychological tolerance, according to CNN.

The final count will be 24 with 12 females and 12 males. They will be selected to make up six crews of four, which Mars One says they hope to launch to the Red Planet every two years from 2024, with the aim of starting a colony there. The list of 100 finalists includes scientists and academics as well as those who are just seeking adventure.

The 24 successful applicants will undergo intense training for eight years.  “The teams will be isolated from the world for a few months every year in simulation facilities, to learn how they respond to living in close quarters while isolated from all humans except for their crew members. In addition to the expertise and work experience they must already possess, they have to learn quite a few new skills: physical and electrical repairs to the settlement structures, cultivating crops in confined spaces, and addressing both routine and serious medical issues such as dental upkeep, muscle tears and bone fractures,” according to the Mars One website.

Art imitates life

In the 1972 movie “Silent Running” starring Bruce Dern, he plays a character named Freeman Lowell who is part of space expedition consisting of four crewmen aboard the space ship Valley Forge. Lowell is the resident botanist and ecologist who tends and preserves a variety of plants for their eventual return to Earth and the reforestation of the planet after an ecological disaster. Lowell spends most of his time in the bio-domes, cultivating the crops. To make a long story short, he and three drones he calls Huey, Dewey and Louie are the sole survivors on the ship.  Lowell reprograms Huey and Dewey to plant trees and play poker. Huey is damaged when Lowell accidentally collides with him while driving a buggy recklessly, and Dewey sentimentally refuses to leave Huey's side during the repairs.

According to Mars One, the colonists will only have canned or freeze dried food, which makes one wonder why grow lights in bio-domes are not being considered.  Lowell, on the other hand, grows his own food and is horrified when he discovers that his bio-dome is dying, but is unable to come up with a solution to the problem.

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When a rescue ship eventually re-establishes contact, Lowell knows that his crime—he killed a crew man--will soon be discovered. It is then that he realizes a lack of light has restricted plant growth, and he races to install lamps to correct this situation.

In an effort to save the last forest, Lowell jettisons the dome to safety. He then detonates nuclear charges, destroying himself and the ship. The final scene is of the now fully lighted forest greenhouse drifting into deep space, with Dewey tenderly caring for it, holding an old watering can.

We don’t know if drones or bio-domes are in the future for the Mars astronauts, and the ultimate outcome of the experiment is uncertain. The Mars One description of what they will report is optimistic highlighting the lighter side of isolation.  They will be asked to share all that they enjoy and find challenging. It will give the people on Earth a unique and personal insight view of life on Mars. The creators have envisioned intriguing questions like: What is it like to walk on Mars? How do you feel about your fellow astronauts after a year? What is it like living in the reduced Mars’ gravity? What is your favorite food? Do you enjoy the sunsets on Mars? These are lovely questions, but somehow they skirt the interpersonal issues that could be the down fall of space exploration.

Reports would have to include interpersonal relationships and the effects of living on a hostile planet and confined enclosures with restricted interaction and support of a wider community. In science fiction movies like “Silent Running” and more famous “Space Odyssey: 2001,” the science was the easy part. Living together was the challenge.  I know you are probably thinking can science fiction predict the future. 

Business Insider described some instances when science fiction writers like Jules Verne did in fact predict the future in their books, some of which have been made into movies.

 Verne's dystopian "Paris in the Twentieth Century" wasn't his greatest work, but what makes it most interesting are the inventions he predicted almost 100 years before they were actually made. They include the submarine and the technology needed to land on the moon, they said.

“The World Set Free” by H.G. Wells predicted the use of atomic bombs. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley told us about a society controlled by mood-enhancing drugs. If you have ever heard the phrase “Orwellian,” then you know “1984” predicted world domination by a select few. 

“Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein:  he may have also foreseen the Mars One mission to send people on a one-way ticket to live on Mars, as his book's main character was born and raised on the red planet.

“Neuromancer” by William Gibson was published in 1984 about cyberspace and computer hackers. Many of us were still figuring out how to use a computer while Gibson's character was not only using a computer, but hacking and stealing data.

Earthlings are consistently overwhelmed by the enormity of space and the infinite possibilities for future generations who will be space explorers. Mars One is the beginning of experimentation with living on other planets in a different atmosphere and environment.  If stories about space travel are any indicator, the most difficult challenge will be just trying to get along with others, which if you think about is the same thing many of us are doing on earth.   

Resources
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/17/tech/mars-one-final-100/
http://www.mars-one.com/mission/humankind-on-mars
http://www.scifimoviepage.com/silent.html