Mars One, a non-profit organisation based in the Netherlands has an encouraging mission: establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars. The organisation has selected 100 candidates out of the initial 202,586 applicants who are to get in the third selection round.
The list is made out of 50 men and 50 women who come from all around the world – with 39 coming from North and South America, 31 coming fromEurope, 16 from Asia, 7 are coming from Africa, and 7 are coming from Oceania.
The plan goes like this: these 100 selected folks that are susceptible to be Martian emigrants must take part in group challenges before the successful winners, which will be something between 24 and 40 people, will be announced later this year.
The remaining group will then have to undergo nearly 10 years of training while they will have enough time to rethink and maintain the option to never be able to return once they leave Earth’s orbit. Moreover the candidates will have to prove their ability to live in difficult conditions, as well as work together under despite really harsh circumstances.
It is believed that at at least six groups of four will be trained in order to be ready for the trip to Mars. Also as a part of the mission, crews of four people will regularly be sent on a one-way trip to Mars every two years, starting in 2024.
In order to have everything ready for the new inhabitants, Mars One’s planed an unmanned mission due to launch in 2018. But still some exterior problems are likely to occur. For instance Mars One knows that it will need billions of dollars so as to conduct its Mars missions, along with a robotic rover mission that’s planned for launch in 2018.
“When you see what we do with this planet, what we do with each other, we still have wars, we are constantly doing the same mistakes again and when I heard two years ago that someone wants to build a new society on another planet I said I have to be a part of that,”
said Australian Gunnar Prehl, 41, who’s made it on the list. By and large the list of 100 includes both scientists or academics, as well as people who are simply looking for the ultimate adventure.
It goes without saying the the money issue is by far the biggest unknown right now. And apart from this, last year, an MIT study actually found that Mars One’s plan to send humans to Mars and also keep them alive on the way and once they get there, was an “overly optimistic” attempt, as far as technical grounds are concerned.