Mars One has launched a project to put humans on Mars by cutting out one of the biggest costs of the mission. Putting a human into space is easy. A lot of expense is cut out if you don’t plan to bring them back alive.

The target first launch is 2016. It’s highly ambitious and it’s no surprise that many people think this will not happen. The project does seem to depend on people giving a large amount of money to the project very quickly. My concern was a throwaway line in the press conference, that the colonists would grow their own food. Mars One currently has 80,000 applicants. So far, the number of successful offworld farms less than one. Growing food is not a solved problem. If humans are going to move off-planet, then botanists will have to find edible life on another planet, even if they have to put it there themselves.

A rust red combine harvester running over rust coloured wheat against an orange sky.
Farming the Red Planet might be more difficult than some people think. Photo: Jan Tik.

There is ongoing research into the problem. Gene Giacomelli has a prototype lunar greenhouse. The greenhouse doesn’t look that the big domed greenhouses of pulp sci-fi. It’s built to work underground, and there’s plenty of underground on earth that could use it too. Even if you don’t have your greenhouse underground, it could still be in the shade in an urban environment. You don’t have to travel to another world for real world applications.