07/2015: Living on Mars (R. MacDonald)

Place and Time: Abingdon, July 23, 2015 at 19:30

Title: Living on Mars – A Beginner’s Guide

mars-bgHumans will go to Mars one day. But what if we skipped the plant-a-flag stage, and instead built a permanent human settlement on Mars in, say, 2027?

What challenges will need to be overcome to make this a reality, and how can they be dealt with? What technologies will be needed for a small community to survive (and ultimately thrive) on the red planet? How might the early Martian pioneers engineer unique solutions as they construct the first society on another world?

In a first for human space-flight, the Mars One project intends to send 4 people on a one-way mission of permanent settlement to Mars in 2027. This will be preceded by a series of unmanned precursor missions, the first one of which is planned for a 2020 departure. What makes Mars One unique is that it is entirely privately funded, international, and apolitical, which enabled it to launch a global astronaut selection process in 2013 – to which over 200,000 people from over 140 countries applied.

After a series of cuts, there are now just 100 people remaining in Mars One’s selection process. By early 2016, 24 will be chosen to enter full time astronaut training for the mission.

In this talk Ryan MacDonald will explore the architecture of Mars One’s mission. A special focus will be on how a one-way trip using just existing technology is not only possible, but is substantially simpler and cheaper than previously proposed return missions.

Speaker: Ryan MacDonald

Ryan MacDonald has just finished his degree in physics at the University of Oxford and is now pursuing a DPhil in Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. At the same time, he is one of the last 5 British Mars One Astronaut Candidates.

Further information about the speaker

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