It’s the year 2030, you wake up to a red monochrome landscape, deep craters sit just outside your window and the sun beats down without obstruction from clouds. Welcome to Mars. You’ve just become one of the 100 civilians to colonize the red planet with the help of the Mars One program. It might seem like an amazing opportunity, but remember, unlike Matt Damon in “The Martian,” there really is no return trip home for you. Your ultimate goal is experimental and although there are lots of risks, this is how humans may finally leave Earth permanently.

When put into perspective, the whole expedition sounds like something plucked straight from a science fiction novel.Like those stories scientists, engineers, astronomers, and many more STEM related fields have been working on Mars One in the modern age, or more specifically since 2011. Obviously to them, there is some type of real possibility that colonizing Mars could be a success.

I personally have always been interested in space exploration and discovery. Most children tend to be curious about the starry night sky above, but part of me actually had that small voice in my head saying, “I wanna go to Mars!” Well, just my luck, you had to be eighteen to sign up, and they are already training the civilians that did sign up. Either way, there is something amazing about the next step we will be taking,  but there is also something scary about it too. There are many things that could go wrong, and although everyone with the Mars One project are volunteers, someone will still be blamed if something goes wrong, and that tends to be the whole space exploration community.

Just look at NASA for example. The one time their rocket did explode on the way up to space (Space Ship Challenger, one of the first shuttles with civilians on board), all of NASA was blamed. Most of the scientists and engineers at NASA had warned not to launch the rocket, but were pressured by the public relations department of the government to do so.

Overall, what I am trying to say is that this next giant leap for mankind could be the most risky jump we have taken yet. There is so much more to see on road to space exploration, and as space programs like NASA are losing money from the government, Mars could be a rejuvenation of human curiosity about space.

In the past we said, “One small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.”

Next, we may even be calling half of the human population Martians.

If you would like to know more about the Mars One Expedition go to:

 http://www.mars-one.com/