9 South Africans apply for the ultimate getaway: Mars

Mars One is giving away one-way tickets to Mars. Interested? So far around 35 000 people around the world are, nine of whom are from South Africa. But first, let’s back up a little.

What is the Mars One project?

Mars One is an organisation that aims is to establish the first human settlement on Mars by 2023. The non-profit organisation, founded in the Netherlands, plans to start populating Mars with humans by using an on-going, global media event, from astronaut selection to training, from lift-off to landing, to provide primary funding.

The website is currently taking applications for the Mars One project. According to the site, applicants must be intelligent, creative, psychologically stable and physically healthy and submit a video of why they wanted to go to Mars and why they should be selected.

If all goes according to plan the first group of four astronauts will set off to Mars in September 2022. The flight would take between seven and eight months, seeing them arrive around April 2023. Plenty of time to watch re-runs of Lost or consider your life choices. Here’s a little more about it:

No coming back

One important factor (the most important factor, I should think) is that once on Mars, there would be no coming back. ‘There is no means to return to Earth. Mars is home,” is how they’ve worded that little nugget of info on the website.

South African applicants

Life on Mars

According to Mars One co-founder Bas Lansdorp, since starting Mars One in March 2011 they have received support from scientists, engineers, businessmen, and women and aerospace companies from all over the world. They project will maintain 40 trained astronauts during the full duration of its missions, who will be responsible for installing the connecting tubes between the individual capsules (known here on Earth as ‘homes’), configuring and activating the food production units, and assembling the remaining solar photovoltaic panels. Here’s a little look at what things will be like up there:

Whether you find it all little crazy, extremely exciting or slightly unnerving, the fact is that the idea of travel is slowly (or very quickly) bursting beyond the grasp of gravity. Commercial space travel will happen in our lifetime, I have no doubt about that. As Bas Lansdorp put it, “I believe mankind is destined to be a multi-planet species, to move beyond the confines of our home planet.”