HAMDAN BIN MOHAMMED HAMAD AL MANSOURI PROFESSOR MELIKECHI A NEW EARTH

INTERMISSION
Rest, Refresh & Refuel
48 49 INTERMISSION
Rest, Refresh & Refuel
Mars One – A new civilisation on
Mars in under 15 years?
Majarat speaks to the Mars One foundation’s CEO, Bas Lansdorp,
about his hopes for putting humans on Mars, and exactly what one
would do on the Red Planet if they went there.
How the Mars colony might look on the Red Planet
Mars One is an organisation with big ideas.
The founders aim to begin a colony on Mars in
the year 2026, with an unmanned preparation
launch scheduled for 2020, using the same
launch window as the UAE’s very own Hope
Mars Probe.
After the initial team of four humans have
landed on the Red Planet, the Mars One
initiative will aim to send another group
every 26 months thereafter, creating a new
civilisation 225,300,000km from home.
There are those that foresee a number of
difficulties for the ambitious project, not least
being able to secure the necessary funding
and acquiring the technology in time for a
2026 human launch to Mars, but CEO and
co-founder, Bas Lansdorp is a man with big
dreams and big ambitions.
“When I saw images of the surface of Mars
as a student back in 1997, it made me want
to go there myself,” Lansdorp recalls, going
on to explain that having spent his spare
time with friends plotting a way to make a
visit a distinct possibility, “I sold shares in my
previous company to finance the start-up of
Mars One.” He has been working full-time on
the project since 2011.
The long-term vision is to bring humanity to a
new planet, but Lansdorp acknowledges this
is something that can’t happen overnight.
“We envisage that the Mars One colony will
be large and equipped enough to be selfsustainable,
but we realise this can only be
achieved by decades of effort and patience.”
Money Talks
As well as patience and hard work, a huge
amount of funding and support from other
initiatives and space agencies is required to
quite literally get Mars One off the ground.
“We estimate the cost of putting the first crew
on Mars in order to sustain the first colony to
be $6 billion.” This figure seems like quite a
large sum, especially in light of the amount
of funding the Mars One foundation has
made public on their website, a figure which
currently sits at $784,380.
Potentially there’s a list of private investors
in Mars One, who choose to keep their
donations out of the public domain. However,
finding $6 billion worth of investment from
public contributions would require a recordbreaking
level of financing.
To put the challenge of raising this figure in
context, we can look back at Live Aid 1985,
the largest global simulcast television appeal
for cash in living memory. The concerts were
broadcast across the globe to an estimated
audience of 1.9 billion, geared towards
providing clean water, food and shelter for
millions of starving people in Ethiopia. The
publicity and enthusiastic support of Live Aid
has never been seen since, and the figure
raised as a direct result of the British and US
concerts 30 years later sits at £150 million
(871,088,600AED), of which the ruling family
of Dubai were the largest single contributors
after a direct phone conversation with
organiser Bob Geldof.
This was the largest appeal for the world’s
public to place money into something which
simply couldn’t be ignored any longer – the
plight of fellow human beings with no power
to be able to help themselves. The Mars One
project needs to achieve funding levels of
around 40 times the level of Live Aid, and in
just 11 years, to reach its target.
The project has apparently managed to
attract some investors looking to make
returns, seemingly attracted by the idea that
if such a project were to take off, the television
rights would be more than enough to provide
a significant return on investment. It is the
television rights and the intellectual property
rights, or at least the profits each of these
could yield investors, which will form the
basis of the appeal for when Mars One floats
on the Stock Exchange in the coming years.
Collaboration Works
But without the support of similar initiatives
and the larger space agencies, the task of
even launching the first crew is made much
Inside one of the Mars dwellings
more difficult. So what kind of relationship
does Mars One enjoy with these numerous
entities? “Mars One is very interested in
co-operating with various space agencies
in the coming years. Many of our advisers
hold or have held important positions at
space agencies. Most of our suppliers have
developed and operated components for
NASA, ESA and the International Space Station
missions. Future co-operation could include
sharing of hardware resources, collaborating
in answering scientific questions or taking a
payload of one of the space agencies on one
of our missions.”
Astronauts would be required to build their own residences upon Mars, should they get there
Lansdorp also hopes to be able to collaborate
with other companies looking to establish a
human settlement on Mars. “We are looking
to join forces with several other initiatives,
both private and public, to allow each of us
to play a role in bringing humanity to a new
planet.” he states.
When it comes to the technology and the
personnel required for such an ambitious
project, both already exist. In fact currently,
there are 100 hopeful applicants being
put through their paces at the Mars One
headquarters in the third round of candidate
testing. Two of these are Dubai residents.
The original number of applicants has been
stated to be somewhere between 2,000 and
200,000, depending on which media outlet is
reporting on it.
They will eventually be cut down to four, who
will potentially be the first humans to set
foot on another planet. When it comes to
selection of the correct candidates, Lansdorp
believes that the decision is one far too
great to be undertaken just by the foundation
itself. “The selected crew will be heroes
for generations to come as envoys of all
humanity. For this reason, Mars One feels
the need to share the decision of selecting
the individuals with everyone. Having said
that, at no point in the selection process will
the wider public choose someone who the
Mars One selection committee determines
unfit for the mission. The expert panel in
the committee will exclude anyone who is
not qualified, only after which the public will
choose their representatives to Mars.”
ISSUE 02 ISSUE 02