Voyage of No Return

In 1971, the first manmade object landed on Mars: The USSR’s Mars Two probe. It crashed. A few days later though, Mars Three, which had been launched at around the same time, made a more measured landing. It transmitted for around 20 seconds, then stopped. It was the days of the space race, and no one was giving up. Mariner's 8 and 9, heavy satellites supposed to orbit the red planet, failed on launch. It wasn’t until 1976, when the Viking landers made it through and appeared to confirm what Mariner Four had shown: a planet devoid of life. “It was enough to crush enthusiasm for Mars until the mid-1980s, when Mars Observer was approved as a new-start,” the spaceflight historian David Portree says,“Then it blew up trying to get into Mars orbit in 1993.”

Putting boots on extraterrestrial soil was also going out of fashion. “NASA had funds for advance planning in the 1960s and early 1970s, then it became anathema to discuss humans on Mars while the shuttle program was being developed on a shoestring budget,” Portree says. “As soon as the shuttle started flying, people started talking about using it to launch Mars spacecraft propellants and components. That started first outside of NASA. Then the Challenger accident changed the dynamic, making advance planning—humans on the moon and Mars—a symbol of US resolve.”

“My friends in the Exploration Office at NASA Johnson Space Center in the mid-1990s seemed to really believe that the design studies they conducted at that time would lead to humans on Mars in the 2009-2012 timeframe. That would have made a piloted Mars program a natural follow-on to the robotic program under way at that time, which was meant to culminate with a robotic Mars sample return in 2003-2005.”

Clearly, that never happened. Mankind has got better at hitting Mars, and at hitting it softly. Success is still statistically unlikely. Of the 40 spacecraft sent to Mars, only a third of them have gotten there in one piece. Most of the missions have been about finding life on Mars; none have been about putting it there.

And that would just be the first step. The landscape is a killer. Surface locations have names like Elysium and Utopia, but its valleys and deserts are wastelands, with temperatures 100 below fareinheit during the daytime. Radiation levels are high, similar to those experienced by astronauts in orbit, according to readings by the Mars Curiosity Rover—one of the few unqualified successes in Martian exploration. There is sub-surface water, meaning that some form of sustainable existence might be possible, but it would be precarious.

Alone Out There

After all that technical effort, the flaws in the project could not be in the technology or the financing. The biggest risk to Martian colonization could well be the astronauts themselves. If successful, they would face unprecedented levels of isolation and disconnection from the world, which in turn could lead to depression and severe psychological stress. While it might feel to would-be astronauts like Gatenby that seeing the Earth from above might keep them going for the long journey ahead—in fact the scientific literature, such that there is, suggests that gaining a perspective of Earth is one of the principal positive psychological benefits experienced by astronauts—the downsides are dangerous.

Researchers Michel Nicolas, Gro Mjeldheim Sandal, Karine Weiss and Anna Yusupova, from universities in France, Norway and Russia, studied the Mars500, a 105-day Mars simulation , and noted that over the course of the“journey”, participants demonstrated “significant” deterioration in their emotional wellbeing.

A 2010 paper by Nick Kanas, professor of psychiatry of the University of California, noted that astronauts in long orbital missions show some signs of psychological distress, including depression, which could stem from a sense of dislocation and isolation. Candidates are intensely screened for psychiatric conditions and for their emotional resilience, as Mars One candidates would be, but even so, problems are manifest. In his study, Kanas notes, for example, the emergence of psychosomatic reactions—physical symptoms that are thought to have psychological roots.

“For example, an on-orbit cosmonaut wrote in his diary that he experienced tooth pain following some anxious dreams he had of a tooth infection and his concern that nothing could be done about such an infection should it occur in space,” Kanas writes. “Post-mission personality changes and psychiatric problems have affected returning space travelers and have included depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, and marital readjustment problems that have necessitated psychotherapy and psychoactive medications.”

And this all occurs in sight of Earth and in real time communication with the ground. On Mars missions, home will be an ever-receding dot, and transmissions on a 45 minute delay. Practically, the astronauts will be autonomous out of necessity. “No human being has ever seen the Earth as an insignificant dot in the vast heavens... gazing at the Earth has been rated as the major positive factor of being in space, and the experience of this “Earth-out-of-view” phenomenon on crewmember psychology may result in increased feelings of isolation, homesickness, dysphoria, or even suicidal or psychotic thinking.”

Kanas’ research presupposed two profoundly important factors not in play with Mars One: firstly, that these would be professional astronauts; and secondly that any mission would have a return leg.

Mars One will be rigorously screening its applicants, says its chief medical advisor, Dr. Norbert Kraft, a physician who has worked with NASA and the Russian and Japanese space agencies on managing crews’ performance under extreme conditions. “One of the key features is that they can work in a team,” he says. “There are four people, they have to depend on each other. If one person doesn’t function then the team doesn’t. The second is that they have to be smart and intelligent enough to keep up with the program.”

Asked why, given the challenges of getting a crew to Mars, Mars One is proposing sending average citizens, Kraft responds with the same egalitarian argument that drives many of the applicants; an idea that through circumstance they missed out on a chance to go to space.

“NASA say that you have to have a masters degree...for me, if somebody didn’t have the chance, for whatever reasons, family reasons, economic reasons, to pay the money to study in their countries, but they are smart enough, why can’t they go?” Kraft says. “Why should they not get the chance to do it?” “From my point of view, the isolation itself didn’t matter at all. I was not bored. I was surprised that so many people... were bored. I said ‘you selected the wrong people for that.’ I was not even one second bored. It depends on you and what you do with your time,” Kraft says.

“The problem we had, and this is why we are so picky this time, was with interpersonal problems. Gender problems, culture problems. That’s why I think the Russians chose only male, only Europeans and Russians to avoid this. We chose gender differences, age differences as well as culture differences, because it’s just more fruitful. People from different backgrounds come up with different ideas that come from different situations they encounter.”

Asked what compels would-be colonists to make what would inevitably be a fatal mission, even if it succeeds, Kraft deflects the questions, saying that reporters choose to go to Syria, even though many have been killed doing so. He jokes that he is seriously considering retirement on Mars, where the low gravity would reduce the impact on his limbs and cardiovascular system as he aged.

“I had a patient who said he wanted to go on a tour ship on the arctic, and I said, as a cardiologist, this is very risky, you may die if you do that, and he said: ‘Hey, I tell you something, I sit in my garden and stare into the air all the time. I don’t do anything. I want to do one thing in my life that I really love. If I don’t make it back that’s OK. But I want to do this tour.’ If you’ve signed up for this mission, you have to love it from the very first moment.”

But these choices are simple assessments of risk as opposed to the reality—when joining Mars One, death off world, or on the launchpad, is a certainty. “It’s a choice,” Kraft says when pressed. “They really know what they’re getting into.”

Planetary Pioneers

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the Mars One volunteers who spoke to The Ascender is indeed, their normalcy. These are not adventurers, nor are they, in the most part, even scientists. And yet, almost without fail they talk of high ideals, of setting an example to humanity—of striving for no reward other than a sense that their life will end with some kind of meaning. Should the mission ever actually take off, they would, one way or another, die on Mars, but each has, at least superficially, rationalized the certainty of death on a distant planet—“I don’t really mind the death part,” Gatenby says bluntly.

Others, too are sanguine about everything that they give up: not just the relationships and possessions, habits and habitats, but the possibilities that Earth presents.

“No one in their life can do everything that they want to do, or everything that they could do,” says Ryan McDonald, a 20-year old student from Derby in England’s East Midlands who has signed up for Mars One. “But no one in human history has had the opportunity to go to Mars. Yes, there would be lots of things I’d miss, lots of things that I wouldn’t be able to do on Earth. But in exchange for that, I would be able to do lots of things that no one else on Earth could do. I think in some ways, that justifies the sacrifice.”

McDonald at least has a longstanding interest in space exploration. Articulate and thoughtful, he is currently studying physics at Oxford University and accepts that the chances of making a world-changing contribution to human understanding while Earthbound are tragically slim.

“On Earth, what’s the best case scenario?’ he says over the phone from Derby. “I could be part of a research collaboration, maybe make some discoveries. I would certainly hope that I could make some kind of contribution to the scientific endeavor, but that’s nothing to what you could accomplish with a pair of boots on the ground on a place where we’ve never been before. Within the first few months we’d have learned so much about ourselves and about the universe that I just think from a pure utilitarian standpoint, I would be able to accomplish more going to Mars than I would likely be able to as one of seven billion people on Earth.”

Some people just want to be astronauts.

By any normal standard, Paul Leeming has had a fairly extraordinary life. Starting his career as a seaman officer in the Australian Navy, in the mid-1990s he switched services and learned to fly with the Air Force. He went on to fly passenger planes for Papua New Guinea’s national airline, until the post-9/11 global travel slump left him out of a job. After a brief hiatus, he went to film school, moved to Tokyo and started shooting documentaries and shorts. He is 40 years old.

Of course there’s a vanity to it, I want to be famous, I want to be remembered.It’s not like I haven’t had a life. And it won’t be the end of my life. It will be the end of this part of my life. Speaking over Skype from Tokyo, he lightens his frank assessments of mortality with an infectious laugh. “I look at it this way. If you’re going to be remembered for something, why not make it count?” he says. “The idea that it’s the last thing I’ll do...as if that’s a bad thing, or if that’s something to be afraid of? I would disagree with that. The idea that we’ll take off and six months later we’ll crash into the planet and that will be the end of us. If that were all that happened, I’d die a happy man, knowing that I’d gone further than anybody else.”

While acknowledging the physical and emotional hardships of the trip, Leeming is philosophical. “On a warship you share a cabin with three other people. When I read the Mars One habitat specs, they say ‘you’ll be limited to only 50 square metres per person’. For most people that’s nothing,” he says. “Where I’m living in Japan is 26 square metres. It’s half that. I could double my house size? I like that idea.”

Leeming is eloquent when he turns to the loftier ideals that motivated his decision to sign up. “We are going to go and be the launching pad, psychologically, for all humanity to think we don’t have to be stuck on this planet, we can go further,” he says. “It’s a drive to do something greater than myself."

He speaks for half an hour, compellingly, about how the demonstrative effect of humans reaching and living on a second planet would render the squabbles and border disputes of earth absurd. It is a classic argument, harking back to the utopian visions of mid-20th Century science fiction: an idea that collective human endeavour would ultimately bring about peace. That never quite came about, but Leeming seems to maintain a deeply-held belief that the a project like Mars One could change the world.

“Of course there’s a vanity to it, I want to be famous, I want to be remembered. But I think larger than that... I have seen so much of this world. I’m not 20, I’m 40. By the time I go, I’ll be 50. It’s not like I haven’t had a life. And it won’t be the end of my life. It will be the end of this part of my life.” But he would never get to experience the benefits—that world would be a distant, inaccessible place.

“Touché,” he laughs. “But on the flip side of that, if you think about all the people who changed the world, which are the names you remember? They say the two constants in life are death and taxes, and I wipe one of those out when I leave. The other, people say ‘you’ll die on Mars.’ Well, I would die on earth. What’s the difference? If I’m going to die, I’d rather die as someone who was remembered.” Later, he says: “I remember all the astronauts who died in the Apollo Programs and the Shuttle Programs; do we think that those people had tragic lives?”

Facing "Reality"

Despite its long roster of advisors, it is hard to find a serious spaceflight expert outside of Mars One’s immediate orbit that believes the mission is viable. The company declined requests for an interview with Bas Lansdorp himself, but it is hard to escape the feeling that the vision is just too headline friendly to be real. Mars One retains the aspect of an elaborate hoax, or at least a finger-in-the-air punt that the international fascination with space and reality television will generate the kind of momentum that made Big Brother a multi-billion dollar franchise. It feels almost like the world’s largest Kickstarter campaign—all noise and light, but with worryingly few details about how it would practically be achieved.

Whereas space agencies are brains trusts of aeronautical engineers and physicists, Mars One is structured like an internet startup, with more advisors and board members than staff. While SpaceX and Virgin Galactic began with by developing the technology to create commercially-viable spacecraft, and operate out of giant desert spaceports; Mars One is working on its media rights, through a subsidiary, Interplanetary Media Group. This media-first approach could be an acknowledgement of how, in an environment where public investment in science has dwindled and the key to commercial success is media presence, the future will be shaped.

The term ‘reality television’ recalls the cheap media obsession with wannabe starlets; the easy, artificial narratives drawn out from the “real” lives of those willing to be owned by the celebrity machine. It does not lend itself well to high-minded ideals and scientific endeavour. This is just one part of the distaste amongst some in the more mainstream scientific community, who label the initiative a hoax.

The applicants’ pitch videos are not dissimilar to those broadcast on reality TV audition shows, absent—in the most part—the singing. But along with their optimism is a vulnerability, and reality TV—the media in general—rarely misses an opportunity to create drama of weakness. Their reaction to the media aspect of Mars One ranges from Gatenby’s: “I’m trying not to think about it” to Leeming’s: “It’s part of the sacrifice.”

If Mars One does prove to be a hoax, or falls apart before takeoff, in the middle of it all are the would-be-astronauts: if not naive, then idealistic and starry-eyed when presented with a shot at the opportunity of a generation — a chance to be the first to land, live and die on Mars.

Peter Guest