Aaron Hamm, an assistant hotel engineer who deals with HVAC, cooling systems, and maintenance, lacks the traditional qualifications to be an astronaut. But that doesn't mean he wants to stay on Earth. "I felt… I was discouraged as a child [from becoming an astronaut] just because of how unbelievably competitive it is,” Hamm told Ars. “I’m a very intelligent person and I’m driven to try and achieve my dreams but, at the same time, I felt like it was an really unrealistic goal to try and pursue. As smart as I am, there's always plenty of people that are smarter.”

Hamm, an Ars forum user by the name of Quisquis, has just applied for the private Mars One colony program. For him, a large part of the appeal is that the program seeks a different type of astronaut.



“I think that the Mars One mission and the idea of going somewhere that you're not coming back from for life… that's different than the general astronaut program,” he said. Hamm also emphasized his own pioneer spirit, which he will need if accepted—there’s no return journey planned for Mars One colonists.

A new horizon

Mars One is a private space mission that hopes to send a group of people to Mars in a decade and leave them there to foster the first human colony. It has received endorsement and support from the likes of Gerard ’t Hooft, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. But it has also been criticized on several counts, including treating a serious life-threatening scenario as a reality show for the purposes of monetization and seeking funding while being glib about nearly all the practical details.

Before applicants even get to see the application, they must pay an application fee of around $38 USD (the price varies depending on country of residence). They fill out a public-facing profile and answer several private questions about achievements and awards, incidents that have frightened or stressed them out and how they dealt with them, personality types they find difficult to handle, and how they deal with cultures other than their own. To date, 30,000 other Red Planet hopefuls have applied.

“I want to see the sun rise over a completely new horizon, in a completely new sky. I think that's worth any price,” wrote Erica Meszaros, another Mars One applicant, in her personal essay.

Meszaros is a software developer by trade and interned with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. She states that astronauts are traditionally chosen “from the Air Force” or—more recently, with the success of $200,000 per flight projects like Virgin Galactic—from “those with deep pockets.”

Part of Mars One’s pitch has been that much of the technology for traveling to and maintaining residence on Mars already exists; it’s just a matter of marshaling resources and initiative to get there. Both Hamm and Meszaros echoed this sentiment. Despite being publicly vague on the details, Mars One leaders maintain that they know the cost of the mission ($6 billion) and that it can all be assembled and launched in 10 years.

All applicants make a video as part of their public facing profile discussing, in brief, why they want to or are suited for a mission to Mars. "I have a great sense of humor, so I really get along with everybody," said Francisco, a 32 year-old Argentinian man who works in "the commercial area at a plastic containers factory."

"I’ve got a feeling that I don’t belong here, but out there,” said Anders, a 51-year-old Swedish man who has the most popular profile on the site. “What makes me the perfect candidate? Well, I’m single. I’m flexible."

"I believe that the challenge that I’m putting up with everybody… If anybody can challenge me with the knowledge and all the things that I can do, then I give up, but if not, I would like to be the first one to go,” said Vasile Sofroni, a 54-year-old Romanian man with the second most popular profile.

The technical viability of the project has been repeatedly called into question, though detailed critiques are hard to come by because the project is so vague (the New York Times summed up the general feeling in a recent article that talked about the "significant skepticism" that Mars One "has raised in some quarters").

Critics also criticized Mars One for its attempt to turn the trip into an extravagant and potentially dangerous reality TV show. The first round of the application process allows people to vote on applicants based on their public profiles to push them through to the next qualifying round (though there is not, per the current design, any public involvement going forward).



But neither Hamm nor Meszaros see themselves as fame seekers. “I don’t, right now, have a strategy for progressing, other than trying to get across my passion… for this endeavor,” Meszaros told me. Hamm said that he has been pushing his application and name out on sites like Facebook (“my friends are already a little tired of it”) but notes he has “never applied to another reality show.”

Worth the risk

By now, Mars One has proven that there are sufficient number of people who don't need to know any technical details for about the potential chance to live on Mars. Tens of thousands have plunked down cash to throw their would-be astronaut helmets into the ring without needing virtually any concrete information.

But should space travel push come to reality entertainment shove, aren’t applicants at least a little afraid of—how to put this delicately—either a fiery space death or a frigid Martian death?

“The purpose that I would be pursuing is so much greater than myself,” Hamm said. “I think the benefit to humanity is overwhelming of those fears.”