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<\/a>This last daydream is being brought to life by a Dutch non-profit organization known as Mars One.<\/p>\n
The organization, founded in 2011, has set their sights on having the first four people inhabit a colony on Mars in 2023. The estimated costs of this first mission are a staggering $6 billion. Mars One, however, is confident that this type of mission will generate enough public interest to easily fund its operations. They are currently receiving donations from benefactors worldwide, as well as operating an Indiegogo campaign. After the initial launch, the plan is to send a four-person mission each time Earth and Mars\u2019 orbits bring them closest together, around every two years. In April of 2013, the Mars One website began allowing candidates to submit their applications to become possible future Martians.<\/p>\n
Within a few months they had received over 200,000 applications. One of them was from Sooke resident Marina Miral.<\/p>\n
Congratulations, you have been selected<\/b><\/p>\n
In late December, the 30-year-old Miral received an exciting email. \u201cIt took a few months and I kind of figured that they\u2019d already chosen their people and I didn\u2019t have any chance whatsoever, but I still got the newsletter,\u201d says Miral. \u201cSo, I got an email from them on December 30 and I just assumed it was the newsletter, but checked it anyway, and it was actually an email saying I\u2019d made it to the next round.\u201d Miral is one of around 1,000 candidates that were handpicked from the first 200,000 applicants. This will be whittled down to 40 candidates remaining to go to Mars.<\/p>\n
Miral claims her interest in space started at young age. \u201cIt started with the stars. Every kid loves watching the stars and trying to figure out how space could go on forever,\u201d says Miral. \u201cI\u2019d actually stay up for hours at night, thinking if I thought about it for long enough I could figure it out. Then, when I was 10 years old, I got into Star Trek<\/i> and I\u2019ve been a huge fan ever since. I always wanted to go to Star Fleet Academy, but it\u2019s obviously fictional, so it was kind of depressing knowing that the one thing I wanted to do was something I could never do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prospect of a mission to Mars revives a glimmer of hope in Miral. If she is chosen to make the expedition, she would truly accomplish her childhood dreams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way I see it, it\u2019s kind of like the birth of Star Fleet; they have this idealism and they\u2019re trying to bring the whole world together to cooperate and work together to explore. That\u2019s just so Star Trek,<\/i>\u201d she enthuses. \u201cThat\u2019s what I see and what I love.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea of the Mars One mission also brings out the scientific side of Miral, which she says has always been her unexplored passion.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonally, I really want to explore. Just being on a new world is so completely mind-boggling and surreal, but I would love getting this opportunity to get back into the sciences and study geology and how Mars itself came to be, and also of course look for signs of life,\u201d she says. \u201cObviously, it would just be bacteria, but it\u2019s very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently a juvenile-fiction writer, Miral has always had her eyes on the stars, focusing on sciences since the beginning of her school years. \u201cI really loved science when I was in school and I almost went into the sciences because I wanted to work in the space industry,\u201d she says. \u201cLooking into it more, I kind of realized that my chances of getting that kind of job were incredibly slim, which is why I decided to go instead into writing so I could imagine other worlds instead of exploring them, and now I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow, I did have a chance? It\u2019s not too late?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Her love for sci-fi notwithstanding, Miral says she clearly understands what would be required of her in a real-life situation. \u201cSomeone asked me why I\u2019d want to go to space if I know it would be nothing like Star Trek,<\/i>\u201d she says. \u201cI think it\u2019s actually better; it\u2019s way cooler to be the first one roughing it out, rather than going on a spa through space.\u201d<\/p>\n
One-way rocket ship to Mars<\/b><\/p>\n
And now, the elephant in the room. If selected, the trip Miral would take to Mars is only one-way, which would mean saying goodbye to life here on earth. Currently, technology for a return mission to Mars doesn\u2019t exist, but the inhabitants of the colony would still be able to talk to anyone from home and send and receive digital material with only the slight inconvenience of a 20-second delay. Communication channels will flow openly from the surfaces of both planets, allowing for the teams to optimise and share any research and discoveries from Mars.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sort of Marina\u2019s life\u2019s dream,\u201d says her mother, Angela Dorsey. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely behind her in trying to achieve her dreams. She\u2019s very fit, very healthy, adventurous, and loves exploring. I think she\u2019d do extraordinarily well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorsey remembers her daughter\u2019s adventurous and curious nature, right back to her sci-fi-obsessed childhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went to a space museum once when she was a kid,\u201d she says. \u201cWe travelled for a year living in a camper and we went to one down in New Mexico, and they had a moon rock there and she thought that was really cool. That was the high point of her childhood, that year travelling around in the camper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both mother and daughter believe wholeheartedly that the mission is possible. \u201cThere are a lot of ifs, but if the Mars One founders work things out the way they want it to, it\u2019ll happen,\u201d says Dorsey. Miral agrees: \u201cIt\u2019s possible, as long as they can get funding. I think it will be going through, hopefully with me, but even if it\u2019s someone else I\u2019m still pretty excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Could we go to Mars? Should we go to Mars?<\/b><\/p>\n
The candidates, as well as Mars One, believe that future settlement on Mars is possible, but there are those that believe otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould we go to Mars? Could we go to Mars? Can we actually live there? The answer is probably a profound no,\u201d says Camosun geology professor Tark Hamilton. \u201cHere, we\u2019re kind of in the Goldilocks zone, where liquid water and ice and steam can all exist and that kind of buffers how the planet works, partially because we\u2019re the right distance from the sun, and partially because of having an atmosphere that is transparent to most of the radiation. It\u2019s like we\u2019ve got a free little invisible electric blanket up in the sky. We don\u2019t have to do anything to make it work. We evolved on this planet because it functions the way it does and we\u2019re fortuitously supported because it works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton cites many unforeseeable problems if we were to try and inhabit Mars. \u201cIt would take all kinds of engineering to do stuff that we take for normal, and we could say that\u2019s all well and good, that\u2019s the space agency\u2019s job, but the biggest thing is: where are you going to surf? Where are you going to get an algae burger? Where are you going to date anybody who you haven\u2019t grown up with your whole life?\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s intentionally making an ecosystem very small and, as such, very fragile. On Mars there is no rainforest to clean up pollution. If you have an accident and bugger up whatever kind of atmosphere you have, that\u2019s the only air you have to breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though he thinks colonizing Mars is an implausible idea, Hamilton believes the challenge of attempting to build on Mars could provoke the discovery of much new technology, just as hunting for submarines in the Cold War led to new technology for mapping the sea floor, which eventually helped invent CT scans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine there\u2019s any particular reason we need to go there,\u201d he says, \u201cother than as a marker along the way to learn some new technologies, but I wish anybody luck that\u2019s willing to go do it, and hope that they can learn some new things for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miral understands that many people are hesitant about inhabiting Mars, but her opinion is that through hard work and determination something like this can happen. \u201cI\u2019m just so surprised that something like this is happening in my life,\u201d she says, \u201cI can\u2019t get down on the non-believers too much because they\u2019re right\u2014it does seem crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s your mission, should you choose to accept it<\/b><\/p>\n
The two contrasting points of view on the mission will be explored thoroughly until the first launch, if it ever happens. Mars One will perform in-depth psychological analysis and rigorous tests of fitness to determine the candidates most likely to perform well on the mission. The organization also states that they will specifically be looking for applicants who will operate well under the assumption that once you leave Earth, there will be no coming back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people get to Mars, it\u2019s a matter of who those people are. Will they work together or wipe each other out after a while? Much attention will be paid to selection,\u201d speculates Robert Gilford, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria \u201cThe travellers will have to leave almost all of their people and belongings at home. People vary in their attachment to people and attachment to place; those who go will be selected for low attachment to both.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miral says she understands the finality of this mission, but also claims she\u2019s not afraid to bravely go where no person has ever gone before. \u201cI know I\u2019d be sad to leave, but not nearly enough that it would make me decide not to go, if given the opportunity. I\u2019d really like to travel and make sure I\u2019ve seen everything I want to see before I\u2019d leave because there wouldn\u2019t be any more chances\u2026 I want to go everywhere and experience different cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is much more plausible now than even 10 years ago that a mission such as this could take place, and within the 10 years before the proposed date of the first launch many discoveries could be made that could further increase the plausibility. Humans have a natural hunger to explore what they have not yet seen, and that hunger has never been bound by the confines of time or space.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unknown now what will happen, but the future holds the solution to many unanswered questions, the one at hand being if humans will land on and inhabit Mars? If people who lived in the \u201930s were told that someday humans would walk on the moon, they\u2019d hit you over the head with the newspaper they just bought with a nickel.<\/p>\n
In truth, the only way to know for sure what will happen is to stick around and find out for ourselves. Perhaps one day Marina Miral will look down on us from a ship in space and then bravely go where no one has gone before.<\/p>\n
All that can be said for now is this: good luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since the dawn of their appearance on Earth, humans have dreamt of leaving their planet and taking up shop somewhere else. To many of us, it may seem like an inevitable end; the waters are rising, the ozone layer has a genetically receding hairline, and soon the last drop of oil on Earth is going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-january-22-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8474,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8470\/revisions\/8474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}