One Way Ticket to Mars

Lawrence Krauss, the relatively well-known physicist and author of The Physics of Star Trek, has proposed in an op-ed piece in the Old Gray Lady that we change our mindset about sending people to Mars.  He thinks that perhaps it should be a one-way trip.

I think his proposal is perfectly valid.  The fact is, that even if we were to send humans to Mars and plan their return, we would have to be very prepared for the likelihood that they would not return.  The risks of sending people to Mars are orders of magnitude larger than going to the Moon.  The radiation, extended period in zero-gravity, solar flares, Martian dust, and simply the time (up to 2 years) where we would need the spacecraft and the crew to function extremely effectively with no failure that couldn’t be easily repaired make such an endeavour extremely challenging.

But what if we did what Krauss proposes?  Select people who know they won’t have much chance of return?  What if we design the spacecraft to give them the maximum opportunity to survive indefinitely on the surface of Mars?   While this wouldn’t be easy, it may very well be easier and cheaper than trying to send a small team of people to Mars and return them safely to the Earth.  Perhaps we send more people, one way.

Robert Zubrin, who proposed a reasonable plan for Martian exploration in the 1990s (Mars Direct) whereby we would send an automated spacecraft to Mars ahead of the humans.  This ship would be the return vehicle, as well has have the facilities to produce methane and oxygen (aka rocket fuel) from the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere and hydrogen brought from earth (because it’s light).  This significantly reduces the cost of a return mission.   Zubrin stated in his original book on the subject, made the very good observation – which has been adopted by NASA for the Design Reference Mission plan (my paraphrase):

If you have a problem in space and you are closer to Mars than the Earth, and on a trajectory to Mars, the safest place to go is Mars.

This is because space is really hostile to survival.  Mars isn’t much better, but at least there is a little gravity and a regolith underwhich you could find shielding from solar radiation.

A quick search of the net finds the Mars Homestead Project, which lays out a pretty interesting concept for the one way ticket idea.   Much like the people who set out from Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries for the Americas, don’t look back…  We should consider that the best option for such exploration is to colonize Mars sooner than later.