Martian Values

Recently, I passed someone with a sports team t-shirt that said, "No Mercy! No Wimps!" Merely winning wasn't enough; they want their favorite sportsball team to beat the stuffing out of their opponents and dance in the scattered viscera.

To the best of my memory, the tough-guy, win-at-any-cost shirts and slogans started with actual athletic apparel and associated commercials. Then that "Fear This", trash-talking attitude spread to marketing for sports teams, cars, gyms, and energy drinks. (BTW, the person wearing the "No Wimps" shirt didn't look as if they could even jog half a block without inviting a coronary event.) Worse than that, though, is that this sneering has crept into and corroded politics, entertainment, and our whole cultural landscape. I've seen the poison of that no-compromises attitude sever friendships and render civil discussion nearly impossible.

On Mars, we won't be able to sustain ourselves with any sort of lingering divisions. A with-me-or-against me attitude will literally raise the risk of getting the settlers killed. Each person's contribution will be critical. Via the oft-derided planned TV show, audiences on Earth will see the Mars One colonists valuing trust, mutual support, and collaboration above self-glorification and trumped-up antagonism. I hope and believe that seeing Martian values in action will encourage folks on Earth to stop and assess the way they treat one another, and to turn away from pointless division and aggressive sloganeering as a substitute for substantive accomplishment.

Mars? Why not colonize the Moon first?

When I first talk about Mars One's settlement plans with people for the first time, almost invariably the question will be asked, "Why not settle on the Moon first? It's so much closer?" It's a question that also pops up on Twitter, Facebook, and blog comments all the time.

And they're right: the Moon is closer. But that is about the only thing to recommend it as a permanent settlement prospect for humans.

So let's take a quick 'n' dirty look at the two sites, from a permanent-settlement persective...

Water. Mars has it in the soil pretty much everywhere, to varying degrees of concentration. Mars One is looking at low-elevation areas about half-way between the equator and the north pole, on the hunch (and Viking 2 data) that the water concentrations will be highest there (but without getting into the permanently frozen polar caps which lots of water, but not so much sunlight). In these areas, evidence leads to the conclusion that the soil holds water concentrations of 3% to 18%.
Luna has been shown to have 0.1% water by mass in its soil. Some permanently darkened craters near the Moon's north pole which are hypothesized to contain significant amounts of frozen water-ice. But mining this would put a settlement in inconvenient spots. And those permanently shadowed craters are among the coldest places in the solar system. Working there would not be easy.

Energy. Because Mars has a day-night cycle that almost exactly matches that of Earth, Mars One plans to rely solely on solar cells to power its habitats. The only plausible alternative is to use nuclear power. There is no existing portable nuclear power plant that is light and small enough to be landed on Mars. And the Mars One people are smart enough to know that talking about launching a large nuclear power source would cause a huge outcry on Earth and face all sorts of regulatory hurdles. Both the engineering and the litigation would drive up costs considerably. Luna's day-night cycle is 28 Earth days long: each lunar day is 14 Earth days long, as is each lunar night. This makes relying solely on solar power impractical for a lunar settlement. To try to do so would require building, launching, and landing huge, heavy batteries to store sufficient power to carry the settlement through the two-week long night. So that leaves the launching and landing of a nuclear power source as the lunar settlement's only option. Good luck with that.

Food. Okay, having the Earth close by does make it easier to ship food to the moon. But just ask the ISS astronauts: how satisfying is it to live on pre-packaged meals for months (or in the lunar colony's case, years)? It sure would be nice to grow most of your own food. Last year, results were published from an experiment to grow plants in simulated Martian, Lunar, and Terran soils. (Okay, the Terran soil wasn't simulated.) In a single sentence: Mars soil does pretty good (better than some of the Terran soil types); moon dirt sucks. So on the moon, you'd have to pay a lot of money just to get some good dirt. Surely there won't be a PR problem with that.

Temperatures. Everyone talks about how cold Mars is. And it is cold: ranging from -180°F to -65°F in the mid-latitude, non-polar regions Mars One is looking to settle in. But that's nothing compared to Luna, where temperatures swing from -387°F at night up to 253°F during the day.

Radiation. Neither the moon nor Mars have a magnetic field to ward off most of the solar and cosmic radiation coming their way. But Mars does have an atmosphere that helps reduce the radiation a bit. And being further from the sun than the moon is, the density of radiation Mars gets is less than what Luna does. Building on either place, your best bet is build or bury your habitat beneath a lot of dirt.

Location, Location, Location. The moon's proximity offers only one real feature that Mars does not: the possibility of returning to Earth. A settlement on Luna would allow people to do 6- or 12-month stints there, and then return to their regular lives. Such relatively short stays on Luna should allow their hearts, muscles, and bones to return to normal after some recuperation period, just as the ISS astronauts' do.
However, in my experience most people think about the (relative) closeness of the Moon in terms of being able to rescue people in the event of some emergency. But retrieving people quickly is not a realistic prospect because that requires having a very large, very expensive rocket sitting in a very large, very expensive building being maintained for months or years by a host of very expensive (but not necessarily large) technicians, just on the off chance that something goes wrong at the Lunar settlement. Even getting emergency supplies or equipment to the Moon on short notice requires having a stand-by rocket available and maintained. This sort of costly expenditure is one that neither governments nor private companies will sustain for any protracted length of time, even with human lives at risk. With Mars One, the settlers and those on Earth know from the get-go that returning or emergency supplies are impossible. No one is misled or given false hope. And the Mars One settlers are okay with that. The folks on Earth should be, too.

And then THIS happened... Making the Mars 100

Receiving the email itself was not a surprise. We had been told when it would come: a few days before the official announcement. Sitting in the kabob shop, I even distracted myself for almost three full minutes after the appointed moment before checking my Inbox. I fully anticipated something like the usual job rejection letter: "Thank you for applying, but your skills do not meet our present needs..."

But I got something else, altogether.

Honestly, upon seeing the word "Congratulations", my first thought was an expletive. I really had not expected to advance to Round 3. Hell, I had never expected to advance into Round 2, either. But back then, just over a year ago, I was one of 1,058. Cool to make it in, but still strong odds against advancing.

I felt like a stone had suddenly appeared in my stomach. Lunch lost all its appeal.

Don't get me wrong: I want to go to Mars, even on a one-way mission. But so many things not under my control have to occur correctly and in a timely fashion for that to happen. But even before those out-of-my-control items can occur, I may have to take decisions that throw my life and the lives of my family into disarray. There are things I need to know that Mars One cannot (understandably) tell me at this time: If selected, how much will I be paid? Will I have to move, and if so, to where? What's their dental plan like?

These questions may seem prosaic, given that I may be asked to blast off the planet, go where no one has ever been before, and try to stay alive indefinitely in a human-made bubble. But all that really dangerous stuff is years down the road. In the meantime, I have a family to support.

And there remains the real question that I have been wrestling with for over a year: can I undertake something that ultimately means leaving my wife behind? Or which could drive her from me?

All that and more flashed through my head as I mechanically ate my chickpeas and naan.

Still...

Still... The chance of my being selected to go to Mars had risen. One in twenty-four.

Wow.