One-Way Trip to Colonize Mars

[groovychk]

• May 8, 2006 | 8:30 p.m. ET
Risking it all on Mars:Would you chip in a million dollars to have someone go on a one-waytrip to Mars? How about $100,000, or $10,000? It may sound like theultimate revenge, but X Prize founder Peter Diamandis is floating the idea as a privately funded way to start settling the Red Planet.

The plan, which Diamandis outlined this weekend during the International Space Development Conference,assumes that 100,100 contributors would drink the Red Planet Kool-Aid.It also assumes that all the medical, technical and logistical challenges involved in setting up a permanent Mars base can be solvedfor about $8 billion — far less than NASA's projected price tag.

But some folks are already to go, including SpaceShotfounder Sam Dinkin, who is offering to run the lottery that wouldselect the Mars trainees. "I am in for $100,000," Dinkin writes in Transterrestrial Musings.

Theidea of one-way Martian settlement missions, with no provision made forreturning to Earth, has been seriously kicked around for a couple ofyears, with Australian scientist-philosopher Paul Davies among the high-profile proponents.Davies and others say that making the trip one-way would make thejourney affordable — and that plenty of people would be willing to takethe ultimate risk to push the frontier forward.

Diamandis'plan, which he calls the "Mars Citizenship Program," adds aprivate-sector, volunteer twist to the funding arrangements. "I dobelieve that there is no government in the world that will send aperson on a one-way mission," he said. "They will never take the risk."

Heenvisions kicking off the recruitment effort with an endorsement from"a very wealthy individual, or a hypercredible movie star or someone ofglobal notoriety." This is in line with Diamandis' theory that even aseemingly wacky idea have a better chance of getting off the ground ifa phalanx of credible authorities stands behind it.

"Ifyou announce it the right way above the line of supercredibility, itwill succeed," he said. "When we announced the X Prize, we had the NASAadministrator there, the head of the FAA, 20 astronauts, Burt Rutan, Erik Lindbergh. People never asked me, 'Do you have the money?' 'Are any teams out there?' They believed that mission, and we made it real."

Hisformula for raising the money this time calls for getting would-be Marssettlers to contribute to the cause, according to this schedule:

• $10,000 each from 90,000 people.
• $100,000 each from 10,000 people.
• $1 million each from 100 people.

That's$2 billion to start out with, and Diamandis projects that smartinvestments could bring the war chest to $8 billion in the course of adecade. During that time, the project's managers would undertake aseries of preparatory missions. "They start sending to Mars a nuclearreactor, habitats, remote-controlled rovers, food supplies," he said.

Alottery would pick 101 candidates out of the 100,100 supporters formedical screening and training. A succession of six-member crews wouldthen be selected from the pool for the one-way missions. Each crewwould be brought up to a space station for the transfer trip to Mars.As the transfer vehicle whizzes by the Red Planet, "you hop out in yourcapsule, and you just send the people down to the surface" — where therobotically built habitats would hopefully be waiting.

The Mars settlers would have "100,000 people rooting for them" back on Earth, sending what's needed to sustain the new colony.

Thereare plenty of gaps to be filled in here: When orbital push came toshove, would that many people really give that much money to severphysical ties with their home planet? Whom would they trust with themoney, and is the technology really doable? Could the project survivethose first citizen casualties? Wouldn't it be better to wait for theprofessionals to go in there first?

Ifyou're waiting for the NASA mission, you're going to have to wait along, long time. At one time, the space agency said it couldconceivably send humans to Mars by 2025 or 2030. But Dan McCleese,chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said those dates are no longer workable, due to budgetary considerations.

"This date of 2030 is slipping very rapidly," he said over the weekend in Los Angeles.

McCleese told me that NASA has discussed staging one-way human missions — but that the challenges would be unprecedented.

"Thefirst time you go is permanent," he noted. "The first time I land, Ihave to have all the infrastructure to stay there forever. That's anentirely new thing for a space mission."

All this begs the question: Would you go? Feel free to register your vote in an unscientific poll, and send along your comments on the Mars Citizenship Program or other settlement schemes. I'll pass along a selection of the feedback later in the week.