Mars One: Are we REALLY going to send people on a one-way mission to Mars?

IT’S a reality TV show from another planet, literally. Mars One plans to send people on a one-way journey to the red planet. But is it actually possible?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about sending people to Mars. It’s prompted by publicity for Mars One, a so-called reality TV show produced by a television company in The Netherlands.

Mars One envisages sending crews on one-way, never-to-return missions to the red planet by the year 2024.

It sounds incredible, but is it really going to happen? And what hurdles are the organisers going to have to overcome?

Getting to Mars

With current rocket technology, it takes between seven and nine months to reach Mars. That’s a long time to be cooped up inside a tiny spacecraft with, presumably, a small number of crewmates.

The potential psychological effects of such isolation are not fully known, although there are parallels here on Earth with long-duration submarine deployments and wintering expeditions in Antarctica.

Then there are the physical health issues — in weightlessness, your bones and muscles begin to deteriorate. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station take regular exercise, but even that does not fully stop the decline.

And then there’s food. Who wants to spend seven months eating instant meals? Growing some edible plants during the journey sounds like a good idea, but it’s a bit of a risky proposition — what happens if your crops fail?

An artist’s impression of a colony on Mars.

Landing on the Red Planet

Assuming you reach Mars in one piece and are still sane, you then face the challenge of landing.

Landing on Mars is hard … much harder than landing on Earth or the Moon. Earth has a thick atmosphere, so a solid heat shield and a set of parachutes are all you need. With the Moon, because there’s no atmosphere you can just ride your rocket thruster all the way down to the surface.

But Mars’ with its very thin atmosphere sits awkwardly in the middle. Heat shields can only do so much in thin air, and rocket thrusters are harder to use. For the Curiosity rover landing, NASA resorted to an untried technique called a ‘skycrane’, where a combination of heat shield, parachutes and thrusters were used. But they were right at the limit of what could be done — there’s no guarantee that larger craft, such as sizeable habitation modules, can be landed in quite the same way.

Do you want to meet the daring Mars 100 candidates? Then check out the list! http://t.co/QJ3fEyxI66 #Mars100 pic.twitter.com/wuulqdCn0x

— Mars One (@MarsOneProject) February 17, 2015

Living off the land

But let’s assume you make it down to the ground in one piece. What then? You can’t breathe the air — Mars’ atmosphere is only 1/100th as thick as Earth’s, and its almost entirely carbon dioxide. So you’re going to have to produce your own oxygen, and stay inside most of the time. Venture out of doors and you’ll need to wear a spacesuit.

With the air being so thin, and because Mars — unlike Earth — doesn’t have a strong magnetic field, there’s no protection against solar and cosmic radiation. So you’ll need to overcome that somehow.

And what about food and water? You’ll have to grow your own food, supplemented by finite supplies brought from Earth. Again, good luck if your crops fail for one reason or another. Water? Well, it is possible to extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide and combine it with hydrogen — perhaps brought with you from Earth — to produce water. But you’ll have to recycle everything, perfectly, otherwise you’ll eventually run out.

7 Mars One candidates are now part of a simulated Mars mission. Good luck! http://t.co/yWQlFUqocJ @SPACEdotcom pic.twitter.com/nECQxCLqux

— Mars One (@MarsOneProject) February 10, 2015

Will it ever happen?

Theoretically, none of these issues are completely insurmountable, given enough time and resources. But no one has tried them out yet — even NASA says it is decades away from being able to mount a Mars expedition.

I’ve no doubt that humans will one day land on Mars. But I won’t be holding my breath for it to happen. The technological hurdles are far from being solved, and the costs would be staggering — think of a very large number and double or triple it. More importantly, the resolve to do it just doesn’t exist at the moment.

But what about that Mars One reality TV project? Well, all I can say about Mars One is that I wish them luck, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Jonathan Nally has been a space writer for 30 years, and appears regularly on the Today Show on Channel 9. See more of his work at SpaceInfo.com.au