what we can learn from the mars one fiasco
By now, we’ve all heard that Mars One is a basically a scam. Well, maybe not a scam by intent, because it seems like the people behind it really did want to do something amazing and start a genuine Martian colony, but got caught up in their own hubris and are now desperately trying to salvage whatever’s left of their original mission. They don’t want to admit defeat after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to figure out how to get to Mars, but the more they try to salvage their organization, they deeper of a hole they dig. But just because those of us who did not think this was going to work in any real capacity turned out to be right, we shouldn’t gleefully succumb to the pleasures of schadenfreude, because this failed experiment does have several important lessons for us to consider. Mars One was not going to succeed as a real colonization effort, but it was successful in starting a conversation about moving it from the world of sci-fi to real world implementations, and it showed us that people are really interested in the idea.
Certainly, we’re not going to get the majority of people in developed nations on board with a big space program dedicated to sending humans to other worlds. There are far too many would-be decision makers and politically influential blocs who are penny wise and pound asinine. They’re squirming when asked to approve $25 billion in space exploration, asking exactly who benefits, how many jobs will be created, the optics of debts, deficits, and poverty not being paid down for the sake of sending a robot to an alien environment, but will swiftly give trillions to banks whose business model is hard to distinguish from that of a professional poker player in Vegas. This is nothing new, in fact it’s been this way even when it was politically important to actually travel to other worlds, and it echoes today, when the pathologically self-absorbed decry Curiosity as an unforgivable waste of time, money, and resources because it can’t cure cancer and pay off the looming balance on their student loans. But they don’t need to decide our fate.
Mars One attracted tens of thousands of supporters because it promised something that jaded bean counters suffering either from the WIIFM disorder or the GE syndrome never could: hope for adventure. People have been working on a factory schedule for over a century and we don’t like it at all. We’ve been trying to break free of the rigid industrial structure almost since its very inception, and many of us are searching for a reprieve from the proverbial 9 to 5 to explore and broaden our horizons, just like our ancestors. What can be a better break from that daily, TPS report filled drudgery than a trip to another world, even if it is one way? Space exploration is an amazing way to channel the energies of those who always have a wandering eye, looking for a place to belong but never quite finding it, their potential wasted by our inability to direct it into a worthy, focused venture. Unfortunately, we don’t reward these pursuits enough to make it really worth many people’s while, which is why it’s so difficult to get more people to see the benefits of building new spacecraft and trying to create business models for space travel.
A sad reality I learned almost a year ago is that if you love space and want to be a part of it, it’s an expensive proposition, so much that after you finally start to cool down after a call from JPL, you have to really start weighing the benefits of a functional pay cut and dealing with the mood swings of a Congress filled with scientifically illiterate lawyers pandering to an electorate which convinced itself that you’re bilking them out of trillions to live the good life, against getting a shot at participating in something you’ve always dreamed of doing. Space exploration funded with a massive influx of private cash from the likes of Tito, Musk, or Bigelow, or outright crowdfunding, would attract more people and relieve the pressures of antagonistic overseers who have pretty much every possible incentive to punch down with you in their sights. Opening up the idea of a space program funded by enthusiasts big and small, and summoning popular support that just doesn’t get enough time in the media is something we should be actively pursuing.
Maybe we don’t use it for an overly ambitious colonization project by people who seemed way too sure of themselves and way too eager to protect their public image when they realized how many challenges they didn’t even know they had to cope with, maybe we use it for something a lot more mundane instead. Maybe we harness it for building experimental lunar outposts where we can develop the technology we need for Mars close to home. Maybe we use it to build small robotic swarms that can coordinate their actions to cover more territory, scouting for a planned human mission. Maybe we invest in the kind of medical and biological research we need to stay healthy while traveling between worlds. Or maybe we can pick and choose from all of that as an entire slate of space startups compete to create the most viable plans for concrete projects and combine them into entire missions. Mars One had a good idea, but it was too grand, with a very unrealistic timeline, and not enough know-how behind it. Why not scale this down to something more realistic and get more people involved in making things happen?
