The participants of the Mars One project – a one-way trip to the Red Planet funded by a reality TV show, planned by a Dutch entrepreneur – would run into issues due to the insufficiently advanced technology, meaning that they would start to die off after just 68 days, a recent study reveals. The report, created by a group of MIT graduates found that the main issue with the project is the plan to create oxygen supplies using food crops, that sounds like an ingenious solution, but given the constrained nature of the projected system it would lead to all sorts of problems soon.
According to the students’ report, as the first wheat crop would reach maturity, the oxygen levels of the atmosphere would rise high enough to create a fire hazard. If the colonists would try to vent oxygen from their habitat, they would also lose a serious amount of nitrogen as well – there is no venting system available that could differentiate between the gases composing the atmosphere. This would either lead to their death by suffocation inside their habitat or to its destruction, and ultimately death by suffocation on the surface of Mars.
The report predicts the first member of the Mars One crew to die approximately 68 days into the mission. To avoid this outcome, the colonists would have to use some type of oxygen removal system, but such a technology has not yet been developed for space flight. Besides the oxygen problem, there are a series of more subtle issues discovered by the team of students, including that of the negative psychological effects of the limited choice of foods, the constrained living space and the repetitive social interaction. The report’s authors have declared not to be against the project – on the contrary, they consider it a great step toward enabling the sustainable Mars colonization, but consider that technology is not advanced enough just yet for it to be a viable option.