There are plenty of reasons that you wouldn't want to spend 501 days flying by Mars and then coming back — having to drink your own pee, breathing recycled air, being crammed into an RV-sized space with other passengers for more than a year — but, believe it or not, there are plenty of folks out there who are looking to do just that.
Oh, and did we mention that (if they survive), the Mars voyagers will have to hurtle back through Earth's atmosphere at a seemingly impossible 8.8 miles per second? Nevertheless, countless applicants are already signing up to be potential passengers on the first manned flight to Mars that will be taking place January 2018.
"So far, we haven't come up with any show-stoppers, so that's exciting," President of the Paragon Space Development Corp. Jane Poynter said at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. on Thursday, April 11.
Poynter'sParagon Space Development Corp has partnered with the Inspiration Mars Foundation in order to get us to Mars for the first time ever.
Dennis Tito, a millionaire who became the first "space tourist" in 2001, unveiled the Inspiration Mars "Mission for America" project in February, which plans to send a (possibly) married couple to Mars by 2018. In 2018 the position of Earth and the position of Mars will be "ideal" for this historic journey. The next such point in time won't be until 2031.
"There are a lot of unknowns. We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket," Tito told SPACE.com in February.
At the Symposium on Thursday, Tito announced it is his goal to convince Congress to recommit to long-distance space travel by showing how it can be done with the Inspiration Mars program.
"We've already had a ton of applications," Poynter said. "Some of them are kind of interesting, but please don't send your applications just yet. We're not announcing that we're taking applications!"
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