Mars One expedition: Is reality TV compatible with science?

IT has a population of two robots and lots of rocks. But crowds of people are fighting to board a one-way rocket Mars. What are their chances of making it?

Critical moment ... This August 6, 2012 imageshows Curiosity rover and its parachute descending to Mars. Source: NASA

MARS has a population of two … robots. Little air and lots of radiation are just some of the seemingly insurmountable hurdles for sustaining life. So why are so many people willing to die just to set foot on the red planet’s surface?

The drive to be an interplanetary colonist is a strong one. No less strong than that of the brave souls who set forth to found nations in new lands in the age of sail.

Last weekend, a group of 60 aspirant settlers attended a talk at George Washington University in the United States in the hope of building a colony on Mars. It was just one of many such meetings that have — and will — be repeated around the world.

Popular Science magazine reports an extraordinary scene at the event.

“How many of you would like to take a one-way mission to Mars?” the project’s CEO Bas Lansdorp asked the audience.

Almost everybody in the room raised their hand.

They all know the combination of cost, weight and limited resources mean almost any attempt to settle on Mars’ distant surface would not include the option of returning.

But even the chance of this one-way ticket seem slim: Ever-shrinking budgets have seen NASA’s greatest ambition shrink in the space of 10 years from sending a man (or more likely a woman) to Mars down to saddling an asteroid and returning it to Earth’s orbit.

Budget cuts have all but killed manned space exploration.

But that hasn’t stopped the dreamers.

Living the dream ... Are the challenges of putting humans on Mars insurmountable? More than 200,000 volunteers think not. Source: NASA

Mars, in your loungerooms

Their solution: Go commercial. Reality TV commercial, in fact.

The hope is sponsorship deals, television subscriptions and the associated merchandise could provide the means to fund the extraordinarily low $6 billion estimated for sending a cluster of colonists, with their vital equipment, across the gulf of space.

Since 2012, the drive has been on to assemble the show’s “cast” for a proposed 2025 “broadcast”.

Named Mars One, the Dutch-based marketing campaign has proven bigger than Big Brother.

200,000 people — men, women and children from around the world — have registered at the project’s website. Many also paid a$7 to $80 fee (It varies depending on where you live).

Some 700 remain as serious contenders.

Flight of fancy ... A Mars One concept image of their proposed Mars base. Source: Mars One

It’s a crazy idea. Perhaps it just may work.

“I’m no fan of Mars One because of the marketing and the non-scientific nature of it,” says Dr Charley Lineweaver from the Planetary Sciences Institute at Mt. Stromlo Observatory. “But you know it makes me think of Christopher Columbus … Some astronomers said, ‘Chris, the Earth is bigger than you think it is’ … and they were right. But he went out and tried, and found the New World.”

The venture is ambitious. It’s a long way off yet. And, like Columbus, the crew of Mars One are having some difficulty funding the expedition.

The process of whittling down the contenders continues.

The idea is to select four of them for the first mission. Then, if that team succeeds in establishing a toehold on the red planet, five more groups of four would follow in subsequent launches.

That’s the easy part.

Mars One doesn’t build rocket ships. Or colonies.

It’ll leave that to others.

Meet the Martian ... A self-portrait taken by the NASA rover Curiosity on Mars. The red planet is the only known world to be inhabited solely by robots. Source: NASA

Live from our correspondents

Mars is inhabited. If you count robots.

More than 10 years ago, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity touched down on the distant dusty surface to scrounge what information they could.

Since then they’ve been joined by their bigger, much more capable, cousin: Curiosity.

The unexpected longevity of these machines may give some prospect for hope.

But the equally unexpectedly high failure rate for inserting probes into Mars orbit and getting landers on to the surface is a reality check. There have been 43 attempts to get to Mars. Of those, 21 have failed.

That’s a failure rate of almost 49 per cent.

But things do seem to be getting better. There has been little drama since the high-profile European Space Agency’s Beagle 2 lander crashed in 2004.

Rocks ... A common scene from the surface of Mars. Source: NASA

Our robotic correspondents — dating all the way back to the 1970s Viking program — have also been sending back news of a brutal reality.

It’s cold up there. We’re talking -62 C cold. Though it can touch 20C in summer at the equator.

While there is very little atmosphere, there are plenty of rocks.

Lots of rocks. And dust.

Dust storms regularly blanket the entire planet for months at a time.

In fact, there’s little else there — except for the layers of dry and water ice buried beneath the surface and at the poles.

So would even a planetary scientist watch “Life on Mars — the Reality Show”?

“I don’t think so,” Dr Lineweaver says. “And that I think is the biggest Achilles heel of the whole program. I guess they’re going to have to get some buxom and good-looking women and some strong young men who are flirting with each other … and that’ll be the story, not the science. I’m a scientist …”

Happy landings ... There’s only a 50-50 chance of getting craft into orbit around Mars, and then safely deploying payloads to the surface. Source: NASA

Reality crunch

In August this year, the SpaceX experimental Falcon 9 commercial reusable launch rocket exploded on launch.

In October, the Orbital Sciences Antares commercial rocket booster blew up as it lifted off.

On October 31, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo commercial space tourism vehicle broke apart, killing its pilot and injuring the copilot.

And NASA is itself yet to return to manned spaceflight: It’s “back to the future” Orion space capsule is due for its first — unmanned — test flight in December.

While none of the projects have yet been abandoned, they have all been delayed.

Critical moment ... This August 6, 2012 imageshows Curiosity rover and its parachute descending to Mars. Source: NASA

Then there’s the experiments involving astronauts living in close confinement with each other for many months: The drama that reality TV thrives on from locking people up together is exactly what space agencies like NASA have been trying to overcome.

But Mars One’s optimism abounds.

Surprisingly so too does that of Dr Lineweaver.

“You’d get some interesting psychological problems, and that’s what they’d be selling. But that’s not conducive to survival. On the other hand, often the crazy stuff succeeds in a way nobody expects ... so long as the consequences are on the people choosing to do it.”

Baby steps ... The NASA Mars colony HI-SEAS research facility in Hawaii is examining issues such as isolation and recycling in a simulated Martian environment. Source: University of Hawaii

Technical issues aside ...

Mars One asserts a mission by 2025 is possible based on existing technology.

NASA and the MIT University disagree.

A recent MIT review of Mars One’s self-sustainability plans reveal the gulf between their dreams and reality. They estimate the first to leave footprints on the surface of Mars would not live longer than 68 days.

The devil is in the crucial details, they say.

But Dr Lineweaver disagrees.

He believes the devil is really in the lack of lateral thinking.

“When I’m reading this science case,” Dr Lineweaver says, “it seems a little bit too obsessed with technical details as if they were insurmountable. They’re over emphasising the technical hurdles and underestimating ways to get around them.”

For example: MIT says colonists are less likely to die from a lack of oxygen than an overabundance of it. If the colonists were to grow enough plants to feed themselves, they would emit dangerous levels of the life-giving gas with cascading consequences.

Greenhouses effective? While the idea of growing food and oxygen from plants sounds simple, getting the balance right is not. Source: NASA

“This just didn’t seem like an issue to me,” Dr Lineweaver says, “because a) you’re producing oxygen from plants and b) C02 is everywhere so you have no problem with mixing in as much C02 as you want so long as you have oxygen”. He also points out nitrogen exists on Mars, and this could be exploited by introduced bacteria.

Then there’s the process of extracting critical water supplies from frozen soil.

How? MIT says there are as yet no clear answers.

“That doesn’t seem like an unsolvable problem,” Dr Lineweaver says. “It just seems like a trivial problem of choosing the right place. It is an issue: I just think there is much water there in ice that is very close to the surface.”

And what about spare parts?

Three-D printers can only cope with a limited range of materials. Specialist equipment would need to be shipped up in a long, slow and expensive process.

MIT’s projections show the need for more than 15 heavy rockets to simply deliver building materials and supplies before aspirant Mars citizens arrive. Mars One say they need only six.

“By saying parts break very often therefore we need a lot of Falcon 9s to get spares up there, well the obvious solution to that is to remove some of the moving parts to the things that you are using,” Dr Lineweaver says. “Now that takes time … but that’s not a robust objection of what (Mars One) are doing but rather a suggestion.”

To be fair, MIT’s scientists say they are trying hard not to be killjoys. They’re just trying to be responsible about the challenges faced in settling another planet.

“We do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions (Mars One have) made,” MIT professor of astronautics and engineering Oliver de Weck says. “We’re pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path.”

Astro-entrepreneur ... Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp. Source: Supplied

Made for TV ... Can a mission to Mars and a reality TV show coexist? Source: Supplied

Commercial reality?

The Mars One project appears to have very few staff. Their website lists a medical officer (named as Norbert Kraft), a technical officer (Arno Wielders) and the CEO, Bas Lansdorp.

Along with a handful of ‘advisers’, it’s a critically small team to organise an interplanetary expedition.

After all, this IS rocket science we’re talking about.

Right now they’re still fully occupied with the applicant process.

Little progress appears to have been made in commissioning commercial firms to build the boosters, capsules, colonial housing and support modules — or even garnering TV contracts.

According to their own timeline, the first colonists are supposed to start training next year.

While skepitcal of Mars One’s particular approach, Dr Lineweaver does not oppose their goals.

“I’m in favour of this type exploration,” he says. “Lets not be too obsessed with technical and feasible when so often in science someone says “well we can try this”, and it works.”

But Mars One isn’t his ideal project: “I would say I would be more excited about a human colony on the far side of the moon doing real science than having a bunch of good looking women and men flirting on Mars.”

So is there any hope of turning a Mars shot into reality?

And if they get there, is there any hope of survival?

It’s a matter of faith.

“They say we’re going to Mars to die. But of course we’re not going to Mars to die. We’re going to Mars to live, ” Lansdorp told the weekend assembly.

But first, they have to get there.