The Mars One Mission: Should We Go?
The other day some of my Twitter friends commented on how badly they were feeling about the people competing for acceptance by the Mars One Mission, which is a private venture that hopes to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. The first launch is planned for 2024, and the venture announced that the 200,000-plus applicants had at last been whittled down to the final 100 selectees, who face a very rigorous process to identify the teams who will actually fly the missions. The kicker is that these missions will be one-way, and some (perhaps most) critics believe the crews will have a tragically short life-span once they reach their new home. Some seem to feel like this is a needless and hideously expensive tragedy in the making, while others — the applicants among them, of course — look at it as the opportunity of a lifetime. What say you?
My own take on it is that if I were about 25 years younger and unattached, I would have applied myself. I believe that Homo Sapiens is, at heart, an explorer, and the stars have beckoned us from day one. That’s not to say that there isn’t more to explore here on Mother Earth, but outer space has limitless possibilities if we can work our way through the technological challenges. We have proven we have the ability to get to the Moon, and I personally believe that we’ve had the technology to reach even farther for some years.
Unfortunately, once the Space Race was over, the world’s governments largely lost interest in manned space exploration. But with the emergence of (hopefully) viable commercial ventures like Mars One and others, we may very well be entering a Golden Age of space flight. But the exploration of space has its risks, as it always has. The Mars One crews may perish soon after landing, or they might not make it at all. But if we never pushed outward, never accepted risk, our ancient ancestors never would have left Africa to colonize the rest of the planet, to mention nothing of the many exploratory missions recorded in our more modern history.
But there’s another reason I believe that we need to leave our planetary cradle, one that’s far more imperative: the long-term survival of our species. You can pick your doomsday scenario, or maybe we simply run out of resources on Earth, but the bottom line is that all of our eggs are in one planetary basket. It doesn’t matter if we screw up the Earth or something else does it: if our biosphere is badly damaged, we’re screwed. We need to start building a new nest, and I think the time is upon us.
Getting back to the Mars One adventurers, I’m very curious about how you view their circumstances. Are they to be pitied and mourned in advance? Are they heroic explorers? Or something else entirely. Let me know what you think!
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Pilgrims and pioneers throughout history have faced the same choices. Where would we be if their were not people that were brave enough to climb aboard ships to take a one way trip to the Americas? Whole tribes of primitives that traveled through horrid hostile conditions to try to find a better life for their family and people? Those were one way trips that they were told would be risky and possibly deadly. Thank God for the explorers and settlers. They might meet a deadly fate as others in the past have but it will still be a step into a future I at least hope mankind will have.
I think it is imperative that we go forward with Mars One regardless of the "one-way mission". The entire space race was one massive risk after another, and some of those brave souls never even made it off the ground. But we learned. We lost more, yet we learned. The risks for that knowledge was paid.
Again, agreed. I just think it's interesting how so many people think these sorts of things are "misguided" or "awful," despite the fact that those who want to go see it as the opportunity of a lifetime. The joys of divergent views! ;-)
