Transportation

Visitors to Mars Will Die in Under 68 Days

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: April 8, 2017 9:10 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 1:11 pm

Both Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) and SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), are in a race to get humans into space, perhaps as far away as Mars. Each noted the dangers. One research project has laid them out in detail how visitors to Mars would die in 68 days or less.

Students from MIT published a paper in ScienceDirect. In their evaluation of the Mars One Ventures program they wrote:

The Mars One exploration and inhabitation of the Red Planet means to start in 2025 It will land four people on Mars every 26 months. The ships which carry them will only go one way.

One of the most important conclusions of the research is that neither crops nor oxygen generated for the inhabitants will be sufficient to support life for long. A fatal fire is also a major risk.

The Daily Mail summarized the very long MIT paper:

Mars One is an ambitious plan by a Dutch entrepreneur to send people to Mars next decade and start building a colony there. The proposal has received fierce criticism for its lack of realistic goals, and now one study has dealt the team a crushing blow – by saying the colonists will begin dying in 68 days. Low air pressure, habitats at risk of explosion and a lack of spare parts are among the potentially fatal dangers that apparently await anyone who makes the inaugural trip.

Recently, Musk commented:

The risk of fatality will be high. There’s just no way around it.

That may be why there is no indication that Musk or Bezos plans to go.