As of yesterday, the private sector now has two significant Martian ventures planned for the next decade. While the incredibly ambitious Mars One project is planning to send one way trips to Mars to establish a human colony on the Red Planet by 2023, Inspiration Mars is planning a arguably less ambitious return trip, but on a much shorter time schedule, they hope to take two humans on a flyby of Mars by 2018. The two projects are very different, yet remarkably similar. Inspiration Mars is a non-profit organization planning just one mission. A flyby of Mars in 2018, by two human astronauts. With only five years to make it happen, the timescale alone is ambitious. Inspiration Mars is being run by a citizen of the United States, for the United States. It is largely not an international project and it will work closely with NASA, they have not ruled out government funding for their mission, but are planning to rely primarily on donations.
As a libertarian, I'm not thrilled that the government will be involved in Inspiration Mars as it does subject them to some political pressure, nor am I pleased that it will be a rather nationalistic effort, but I am happy that the initiative is led by the private sector and will be largely funded from there.
And really, it's a bright step in the right direction, the knowledge gained will be invaluable to the team at Mars One, who will have four years to evaluate the lessons learned from Inspiration Mars before launching their first manned mission.
The travelers on Inspiration Mars will live in an inflatable habitat module for most of the trip, the sort being developed and constructed by Bigelow Aerospace.
Mars One, in contrast, will be completely private sector. The Mars One Foundation is a not for profit entity that will own the spacecraft, Earth based training outposts, and the Martian settlement itself. The colonists Mars One recruits will be employees of the Mars One Foundation. They plan to acquire funding through donations, but also through a for profit company, the Interplanetary Media Group. The Mars One Foundation owns the majority of shares in the Interplanetary Media Group, which will play a key role in the project's funding structure. Importantly, Mars One will not receive any government funding and is a fully international effort. This is to minimize the potential effects of politics on the mission, and allow it to remain focused on human achievement.Mars One is probably the most ambitious human endeavour ever attempted, it's a real effort to take humanity from a single planet species, to one that thrives and flourishes on multiple worlds. It's the stuff of science fiction, but it's real, and it's happening.
Some controversy has been generated over the fact that there is no plan to bring the Mars One astronauts home. They will reach Mars, and live there for the remainder of their natural lives. This seems problematic at first, but remember, this isn't a one way trip just for four individuals, the plan is to continue to land new colonists every two years, with the potential to ramp up emmigration to Mars if the demand is high. These people won't be left stranded on a foreign world, they'll be the pioneers on the frontiers of space. The first colonists to the Americas never expected to return home, though they did face a more hospitable landscape in their new environment.
Both of these ventures are great steps forward for mankind. If they come to fruition, they will mark the beginning of our history as a multi planetary species. The first that we know of. Within our lifetimes, it now looks increasingly likely that we will get to bear witness to a reality where "Martians" are real, and very, very, human.
