The Mars One
Project conducted by a Dutch
non-profit organization has begun to
recruit people worldwide recently for
settlement on Mars. Anyone over 18
years old with corrected visual acuity
measured 1.0 can apply to join the
project. This organization plans to
select two men and two women to
settle on Mars after necessary
training.
The Mars One Project
team has already received 80,000 applications
from 120 countries in the world within
one month, most of which are
from China and United States. However,
experts thought it is only a
commercial exploitation without
operability.
The Mars One
Project has signed a contract with
a U.S. space company, which is
responsible for developing life support
system and space suit for Mars
immigrants. The project team will buy
spacecraft from U.S. space technology
organization. After four rounds of
selection, the candidates will start a
seven-year isolated training to learn
survival skill on Mars from 2015. The
final four will win the ticket
to Mars on 2022. It will take
about 6 billion U.S. dollars for
the settlement on Mars.
Pang
Zhihao, a space expert from Beijing,
said the seemingly rigorous plan is
with little operability. Landing on
Mars needs all parties’ cooperation
and enormous funding.
The moon
is 380,000 kilometers away from the
earth and the closest distance from
the earth to Mars is 50 million
kilometers. Distance is not the only
difficulty for landing on Mars. In
fact, technical difficulties are much
more important than the capital
problem.
Zhang Chongfeng, an
expert from Shanghai Academy of
Spaceflight Technology, said in the
first place heavy-lift launch vehicle
needs to be developed. Although the
United States is developing the
heavy-lift launch vehicle but there is
no specific timetable released. Although
launch vehicle with nuclear-powered engine
is expected to solve the problem,
the problem of nuclear radiation
cannot be solved. Aboard a
nuclear-powered carrier rocket is equivalent
to take X-ray scan eight times
a day.
The long time
space flight will result in
decalcification and muscular atrophy. The
artificial gravity technology which can
solve abovementioned problems is unable
to be put into use yet. Pang
said on the long journey to
Mars, there is severe cosmic
radiation, which is a big challenge
to the Mars
immigrants.
Edited and translated
by Ma Xi, People's Daily
Online
Read the Chinese
version: 移民火星靠谱吗？
Source:Jiefang
Daily
（Editor：MaXi、Yao
Chun）
