The people who have applied for the Mars One expedition are out of what is left of their minds. They have no idea what they are getting themselves into. By comparison, the inane beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses look completely sane and logical.
Do they really know what would be involved in living there? At least they understand this is a one-way trip, that there can be no return to Earth. I can only believe they have some romantic notion of what life on Mars would be like and think that it simply means living in space suits amid red dust and arctic temperatures. If it were that easy a base would have been established on the planet decades ago.
We’re talking about a nine-month flight just to get there. A world with no free oxygen and no life as we know it. There is no liquid water on its surface. There is no magnetic field or ozone layer to shield inhabitants from deadly cosmic radiation. A world that is also incommunicado with Earth for extended periods of time. That means should disaster strike, there may be no way of communicating this to Earth and perhaps getting some kind of rescue mission together to help the colonists.
In my opinion, based on the technology we have now, a base on Mars is infeasible. It could not be self-sustaining and so there is no reason to establish one. In the future, when we have the engineering and biomedical problems solved, then I would support such a mission. Until then, the best we can do is send a team, spend a few weeks on the surface, and then return to Earth, joyful that we not only put a team on the surface, but got them all back alive along with the invaluable data they will have collected.
Quendi