Dutch businesspeople, Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders, laid the foundation to begin the Mars One mission plan. The goals of this plan are to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars and to send thousands of applicants to the settlement. His company, named Mars One, is a nonprofit foundation, and the astronaut selection program was launched in 2014. The selection program started with an online application and personal interviews. All over the world, one hundred people were selected among about 200,000 people. There were 39 Americans, 31 Europeans, 16 Asians, 7 Africans and 7 Oceania applicants. The first teamwork ability test targeting them will begin in September 2016. After several kinds of tests, the final 24 applicants will be selected. Each 6 teams, which are composed of 4 applicants, will move to Mars. They will train together from 2016 to 2026.
  However, this project seemed to have many problems. Until a few years ago, President Barack Obama announced launching a manned-mission to Mars by 2030. However, it was postponed by budget sequestration, a procedure in United States law that limits the size of the federal budget, and it can possibly be canceled. Due to this, the project was inexecutable on the national level. Then, is it possible to be successful on a company level? Also, this is not a round trip but a one-way trip. If you take this trip, you can’t come back again. Moreover, MIT reported that the project would fail due to food shortage and a shortage of oxygen during the journey. Also, people have some doubts about how they would the raise the humongous budget for establishment expenses of the settlement or making satellite communications.
  Even though feasibility is very low, all applicants said, “It is possible to go to Mars, and we are not just leaving our family and lovers but taking a chance to represent them.” According to an interview with Popular Science, a science magazine, Railer Juker, who is a 40-year-old doctor and pre-Martian, said, “I have had a happy marriage. However, I’m going to go to Mars, and ready to give up everything I have. If I should remain on the planet, I can help other people on the planet. However, I believe it is also possible to help people on Mars. I have no intention of running away from the planet. If someone thinks like that, I’d like to call them cowards. My purpose for the journey is to widen the horizons of humanity.”
Mars One will send unmanned space crafts to Mars in 2018 and is supposed to send 24 applicants there in 2024. However, the plans have been postponed by 2 years because of obstacles in investment. People need to wait and see to whether it is reckless or valuable.

By Go So-young
sy35@cbnu.ac.kr