One way ticket to Mars

Will we remain on earth until the end of the world? Visionaries like Bas Lansdorp and Elon Musk dream of developing new habitats on Mars. Their projects Mars One and SpaceX are already in the starting blocks.

Let's go back to a bet that you made with yourself I guess. A kind of crazy bet, leads Chris Anderson, curator of TEDtalks, at the eponymous conference in Long Beach, California, in February 2013, to the next topic. "You made some money from the sale of PayPal. You decided to build a space company. Why on earth would someone do that?" he asks his counterpart. Who is none other than Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX. Musk nods while looking down at the floor with a grin and replies, "I got that question a lot, that's true. People would say, 'Did you hear the joke about the guy who made a small fortune in the space industry?' And the punch line would be, 'He started with a large one.' And so I tell people, that I've been trying to figure out the quickest way to turn a large fortune into a small one." But that doesn't answer Anderson's question: Why?

Humanity as a spacefaring civilization

"The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered." was the motto of this conference in its fifth session "Dream!" on which both Musk and Anderson talked about the entrepreneur's projects. Some might call Elon Musk a dreamer, but many also call him a visionary. In 2002, he founded the company SpaceX. His vision: To advance rocket technology. Especially from the point of view of solving a problem, that is crucial to making humanity a spacefaring civilization: Fully reusable rockets. The difficulty, he said, is that technology does automatically improves, but only when strong technical talent is applied to a problem. "There are many examples in history where a certain level of technology was reached and then fell back below that level," Musk explained in September 2016 at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Success despite setbacks

To this day, Musk has been able to achieve a number of technological breakthroughs and successes with SpaceX. However, it took six years until the launch of the first Falcon 1 was succesful. Shortly before insolvency of the company. In June 2015, a Falcon 9 rocket exploded two minutes after the launch - shortly before the planned separation of the first stage and ignition of the second stage. And in the fall of 2016 a rocket of the same type exploded with a functioning communications satellite on board during a routine test. Nevertheless, SpaceX is a private company alongside the Orbital-ATK, that carries out supply flights to the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of NASA. In December 2015 was the first time that a Falcon 9 rocket, or rather its first stage - which accounts for most of the construction costs - landed safely on the earth's surface again. This means that the costs of space missions can be rapidly reduced. And Musk's dream of turning humanity into a spacefaring civilization, could soon become reality.
However, another and possibly much greater challenge still has to be mastered: the refilling of the rockets with propellant on Mars to enable a return to Earth.

No return intended

Mars One, on the other hand, is planned as a one-way trip: "Mars One is simpler than previous Mars missions." explains the female voice from off-screen in the introductory video of the private of the private foundation. "The significant simplification is that the crew stays there" Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp believes that all the necessary technologies needed to colonize Mars already exist. Lansdorp, co-founder and CEO of the non-profit organization, plans to send the first four-person crew to the Red Planet in September 2022. "It's the return mission for which we don't have technologies for yet," he says at TEDxDelft in November 2012 and doesn't say a word about whether Mars One, or its suppliers, want to change this.

Big brother in space

More than 200,000 applications have been received from volunteers around the world who would like to join Mars One on it's mission. The "Mars 100" applicants have been recruited, including four Germans. In 2018, a rover is scheduled to land on the Red Planet and scout the surface for the optimal position for the settlement. In 2020, the rover would prepare the housing and "life support units" to prepare for the arrival of the pioneers. The whole thing is to be financed by a huge media event that will be built around the mission. "The whole world will be watching and witnessing this journey," said Gerardus't Hooft, theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate and Mars One advocate. This is also ensured by the Interplanetary Media Group, controlled by Mars One, which owns the exclusive rights to sell and market the mission broadcasts. A more than profitable business, considering that in 1969 about half a billion people worldwide watched the first moon landing. In 2012, eight million people worldwide streamed the Red Bull Stratos live on YouTube alone. Also a look at the Mars One team shows that the company's focus is primarily on marketing the mission.

The race is on

Critics say neither SpaceX nor Mars One will make the run with their Mars missions. Only NASA has the necessary know-how, they say. Former US President Obama revived the topic of such a mission in the last days of his term. He said that government contracts had been signed with six companies that would develop prototypes for "habitats" on Mars that would support the (survival) of humans in space. NASA, which is planning its mission to the Red Planet for the year 2030, is a decisive step ahead of the other competitors in one aspect: research into human coexistence in isolation. Because often the challenge is not necessarily the technological component, but the human being. Thus, from August 28, 2015 to August 28, 2016, six scientists, including German geophysicist Christiane Heinicke, participated in the HI-SEAS IV (Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) on the Mauna Loa side of the saddle area on the Big Island of Hawaii. The goal was under conditions as realistic as possible as those which can be found on Mars to do some research on isolation and the associated behaviors of the individuals.

"Multiplanetary species"

Who will eventually make the running is written in the stars. However, Elon Musk is certain "Mars is something we can create in our lifetime and where anyone can go - if they want to. There are two ways in which history can go: One of the ways is that we stay on Earth forever and then there may be an extinction event. I have no immediate prophecy of the end of the world, but perhaps such an event will take place. The other way would be that we become a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanetary species. I hope you will agree with me that that is the way we should go." A little uncertainly, he has to ask again, "Yes?" Then the audience applauds at the Astronaut Congress and he shows himself satisfied.

Space Colonization