Here鈥檚 a job that鈥檚 out of this world, literally. A Dutch entrepreneur has set up a private space-flight project entitled Mars One that recently began accepting applications for a voyage to the Red Planet. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly 40,000 applicants from 100 countries were received within a matter of days.
I presume all the applicants read the fine print. Sure, it鈥檒l be the trip of a lifetime. You鈥檒l be immensely famous, joining the gallery of great explorers, men like Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong. But there is a catch. Unlike Columbus and company, you ain鈥檛 coming back.
This is a one-way excursion, a permanent departure from the home world. When you blast off, it鈥檒l be the last time you see Earth.
As the project website says, Mars One 鈥渨ill be characterized not by rovers and probes, visits or short stays, but by permanence. From now on we won鈥檛 just be visiting planets. We鈥檒l be staying.鈥�
Indeed, assuming the whole idea isn鈥檛 a money-making gimmick by the project鈥檚 CEO, Bas Lansdorp 鈥� and all technological concerns are settled 鈥� Mars One intends to land four earthlings on Mars some time around 2023 to set up a permanent colony. Before then, a communications satellite would be placed in orbit around the planet and various landers would make the 225-million-kilometre trip to deposit supplies the colonists will need to build shelters and sustain themselves. Presumably, more immigrants to Mars would follow every few years but, given the distance between the planets, it鈥檒l take a long time to establish a population base.
The applicant list will no doubt shrink. 鈥淭he astronauts must be intelligent, creative, psychologically stable and physically healthy,鈥� according to the Mars One website. That鈥檒l eliminate a good portion of the human race.
But then you have to wonder why anyone of presumed sound mind and body, with every prospect of a fulfilling earthly life, would want to go.
So what would be the motives of those who want to leave? Sure, you鈥檒l leave the craziness of this planet behind and, who knows, avoid the Apocalypse, but you won鈥檛 escape yourself. If you鈥檝e got issues now, the harsh isolation of Mars will heighten every psychological tic and twitch. And having abandoned family, friends and every familiar thing that keeps you relatively sane, and stuck with companions you鈥檝e come to dislike after too much intimacy and too little solitude, you might well go mad.
This suggests, of course, that anyone desperate to be a Mars colonist is probably not a suitable candidate.
Still, we are a species of explorers.
Besides the grand adventure and getting your name in the history books, Mars One is appealing because of what it might mean for the human race as a whole. Sprinkling colonies around the solar system would boost the odds of surviving.
Of course, some will argue our long-term prospects as a species would be better if we devoted our talents and resources to improving conditions on Earth. But that argument has always struck me as short-sighted. Setting aside the possibility of a comet strike or geological upheaval wiping out the human race, you only have to ask what would have happened if Spain鈥檚 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had refused to fund Christopher Columbus鈥檚 voyages.
No doubt, the natives of North and South America would have preferred Columbus stay home. But there鈥檚 no denying that Age of Exploration, from the early 15th century to the 17th century, helped trigger an unprecedented shift in human consciousness and was a huge safety valve for Europe.
Will similar benefits accrue in colonizing Mars? There are no indigenous populations, so far as I know. But perhaps the real potential value will be spiritual 鈥� another expansion of human consciousness. Perhaps we will take yet another small step forward in the universe knowing itself.
At the very least, in the same way the 1960s space race ushered in an era of environmental awareness, so, too, might knowing our species has a tentative presence on another world make us a little more appreciative of our presence on this one.
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Robert Sibley is a senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen.
