Mars One, a not-profit organization based in the Netherlands, is inviting people no younger than 18 to file applications online on its website. Applicants are required to pay a $25 fee to prove that their intention is serious. The selection of 4 candidates will be held in several stages. The final stage is to be held in 2015.
According to the statement on the Mars One website, the organization “intends to fund this decade-long endeavor by involving the whole world as the audience of an interactive, televised broadcast of every aspect of this mission, from the astronaut selections and their preparations to the arrival on Mars and their lives on the Red Planet”.
Now I’m joined on the phone by Bas Lansdorp, Mars One co-founder.
- I have a few questions for you and the first one that we have is this: why are you only looking for 4 volunteers?
- Actually we are looking for a lot of volunteers to apply and we will be looking for groups of 4 and one of those groups will be going to Mars in 2022, lending in 2023 but we will be hiring about 6 groups of 4 in 2015 because we need multiple groups in case one of the groups drops out during the training program which will take 7 years. So, in case someone gets ill or decides that he doesn’t want to Mars anymore, then for this case we need multiple groups always in training for the mission.
- So, in total you are looking for about 24 different people for 6 groups of four.
- Exactly, 6 groups of four in 2015 and every year after that there will be an additional selection in which we will probably select about 3 groups plus the number of groups that dropped out during the year.
- Ok. Are you looking for an equal number of men and women or what is the split here? How many men, how many women are you looking for?
- That is very correct. We are looking for 2 men and 2 women in each group and also in each group we want to have people from 4 different continents to really display that this is an international mission to Mars.
- Four different continents, yes?
- Yes, that is right, because there is no more people in the group but of course in the total training program we want to have people from every continent.
- And if you have people from every continent what language will people be speaking there?
- The official language on Mars will be English because it is for most people the easiest language to learn and during the training program for an each step of the training program people that are still in the race will need to learn additional English skills and they will need to demonstrate them before they can pass to the next round.
- Let’s talk about that for a moment. What other criteria for this selection will be needed? What do you need to have in order to be chosen?
- The most important character trait as amazing as it might seem is actually your ability to work in a group because we are sending groups to Mars, not individuals, the group will consist of 4 individuals but the group is the most important thing and these groups need to cooperate under any conditions, even when things get tough, they need to remain a group because they will need to survive together, there is no help from the ground. From the people that have these traits we will select the best ones and then we will train them, and all the engineering skills and medical skills and the botanic skills to grow their own food on Mars and there will be training full time for 7 years for this mission. So, the people that we will select will become full-time employees of Mars One training for this mission and in the 7 years we can train them, these engineering skills and the botanic skills and the medical skills that they will need to survive. But the most important this is people that apply need to be good at working in groups.
- Working in groups is the key.
- That is right.
- If you will be training everybody, then people don’t necessarily need to come from a specific skill setter, specific background. They can really be an empty canvas and you will train them in a right direction that they should go.
- Absolutely, in principal 7 years is long enough to get a medical degree and engineering degree, so there is plenty of time to learn, to teach people all that they need to know and you need only very specific skills. So, even for instance a mechanical engineer like myself, he doesn’t need all the broad knowledge of mechanical engineering because the only thing he needs to be able to do is fix anything that breaks on Mars and take every component apart and put it back together again. So, you don’t need any analytical skills, the most important thing is you need to be as I said good in working in groups but being good with working with your hands might be a second important feature.
- And how did you settle upon the number of 4? Why 4? Why 2 and 2 – 2 men and 2 women? Why not 6, why not 8?
- Well, 6 or 8 would be extremely good to have but 4 is the highest number that we can fit in the current technology that we can send to Mars, so it is just not possible to send more and 3 is not enough, you need 4 people because we will train 2 people in one certain skill set, and the other 2 people in the other certain skill set, so if one person gets ill, then the other person still has those skills to use.
- Ok, let’s talk about that for a moment. Are you really 100% confident that it is possible to create living conditions on Mars?
- Yes, I think there are 2 answers to the question. So, the first answer is yes, we have the ability to create living conditions in space in the Mir station in the international Space Station, it has been done for very prolong periods of time. We know even more extreme environment that Mars because space is more extreme environment, we can create living conditions. But the second part of the question is can we do this in 2023 and I am sure we will succeed. And there of course I will be much more careful – it is extremely large and complex project and there are so many things that can go wrong, we know that we have a good engineering plan, we know that we have a good financial plan, we know that we can create a good training program for the astronauts but there are so many things that can go wrong that there might be delays, there might be cost overruns and we can have mission failures, there of course are still uncertainty in our ability to achieve what we want to achieve.
- Ok, and I have one last question for you. Would you like to be among the 4 chosen candidates?
- I started working on Mars One really because I wanted to go to Mars, with always an idea in mind of a one-way mission because that is the only technology that exists. But I have a really nice girlfriend and she does not want to come with me. So, that is one reason for me not to go but the other one is, I think, more serious – we really want to select the 4 people of this world that have been elected by the world to be the end voice of mankind to the next planet. This is our philosophy to plant one of the seeds, so this is, I think, the most important reason why I will stay right here on Earth.
