Mars One destined for dreamland: Our view

It's hard not to be impressed by the ambition of a Dutch non-profit called Mars One, which says it hopes to send humans to Mars by 2025. The group, which takes no government funding, said last week that it had received more than 202,000 applicants from would-be astronauts and whittled them down to 100.

It's also hard not to notice the ethical debate that the project has ignited. Mars One would send its people on a one-way trip to Mars, where they would live for some indefinite period producing their own power, water and breathable air, among other things. Are the volunteers modern-day pioneers? Or merely suicidal?

But the psychological aspects, however interesting, are virtually a moot point. That is because Mars One is so utterly lacking in practicality and financial backing that it has a near-zero chance of getting off the ground.

The enterprise has all the hallmarks of government-funded predecessors that were unveiled with audacious aims, received substantial funding, then died quiet deaths. Those projects went by such names as the National Aerospace Plane, a vehicle that would whisk people to the far side of the Earth in minutes; the Space Exploration Initiative, a government-backed Mars mission; and the X-33/VentureStar launch system, a public-private partnership that would reduce the cost of getting into space.

None got further than a few preliminary tests or prototypes. As long as they existed, though, they served as a rationale for funneling money to aerospace companies, which used the money to keep people employed and to maintain their expertise.

Mars One appears destined for a similar fate. The money it raises from crowd funding and corporate sponsorships will keep its people employed, and it will help maintain publicity and enthusiasm for space travel.

What it is highly unlikely to do is provide sufficient money to actually send people to Mars.

The $6 billion that Mars One officials say would be needed to send four people to the red planet is an eye-popping figure for a non-profit. It is also implausibly low. NASA estimated its Mars program of the early 1990s would cost more than 80 times as much, some $500 billion.

Granted, that program called for bringing the astronauts home, which raises the cost substantially. It was also to have been government-run, which would have meant more bureaucracy and less efficiency. Even so, it is a useful frame of reference. And with inflation, the price tag would be closer to $1 trillion today.

Mars One faces the same obstacle that sidelined government programs in the past: the incredible costs of getting payloads into space using chemical rockets, the only existing technology.

This might seem like a lot of naysaying. Perhaps it is. Critics scoffed at Christopher Columbus. They pooh-poohed the idea of flying machines. But the economic and physical realities faced by Mars One are daunting. And the incentives to raise money to keep the group going are pretty strong.

For these reasons, it is best not to get too invested in this program, either emotionally or financially.

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