Mars One Way

Meet the people who’ve volunteered for a one-way trip to Mars in a short documentary video

In 2010, an article was published in the Journal of Cosmology that considered a somewhat taboo question: Would you get on a spaceship headed for Mars if you knew there was no way of getting home again?

Two years later, a Dutch company took up the challenge. Mars One announced that it wanted to turn a mission to Mars into a reality TV show, recruiting wannabe astronauts into a training programme that would send them on a one-way trip to the Red Planet. More than 20,000 people signed up.

You might wonder who these people are. Who’d willingly give up their life on a planet with a breathable atmosphere and take a one-way trip to a cold, dusty planet in the hope of founding the first human colony outside our orbit?

Well wonder no more, because Vita Brevis Films has put together a short documentary that profiles five of them. Here it is:

It’s a fascinating look at the diversity of personalities among those who’ve applied to the project. The filmmakers ask for their motivations for signing up but also what would keep them from joining the mission, and the results are pretty compelling viewing.

Would you take a one-way trip to Mars?