How Russians and Ukrainians will fly to Mars and die there

Six Russian-speaking people are participating in the sensational expedition to colonize the red planet: five Russians and one Ukrainian. The “Forum” studied all the details about each one and found out that it did not agree on the most ambitious space project.

It all started in 2011 with the insane Dutchman Basa Landdorp’s idea of ​​organizing a reality show, the participants of which fly to Mars and build a colony there.

The plan is this: 2024, the first shuttle with four colonists, who are under the watchful attention of video cameras around the clock, will fly to the red planet. The flight will take seven to eight months, they will not be taken back, they will remain there. Every two years, one more additional shuttle will be sent to Mars. In total, four such shuttles are planned. The projected budget for the first crew of 6 is billions of dollars.

Arriving on the planet, the settlers will live in special residential modules, where each person will have a personal space in 50 square meters. For days on end, the colonists will be in charge: grow food and make a living. Meat will not, but, most likely, they will be able to eat insects and algae. At least so write on the official website of the Mars One mission.

Colonists were selected through the project site in three stages. In April, 2013, everyone registered for further selection. In total, 202 586 applications from 140 countries of the world were submitted, the organizers say. In order to accept the application, you had to fill out a form and make a short video with answers to three questions: why do you want to go to Mars; do you have a sense of humor; why do you consider yourself the best candidate. Registration was paid to weed out frivolous candidates. According to the investigation Medium, participants paid differently - from $ 5 to $ 75.

At the second stage, all participants had to pass a physical examination, scan the results and send them to the organizers. Those who went through this stage also had face-to-face online interviews lasting fifteen minutes.

As a result, one Ukrainian and five Russians were among the hundred lucky ones - four girls and one guy.

In addition to these six, the finalists include 39 Americans, 31 Europeans, 16 Asians, and 7 from Africa and Oceania. This year, presumably in November, they will all face the third stage - training and the next selection in America. The “Forum” has collected detailed information about all Russian-speaking “Martians”.

Anastasia Stepanova — Moscow, Russia, 28 years, PR

Anastasia dreams of becoming the first Martian journalist. She graduated from the journalism faculty of Moscow State University, and also attended the space journalism school, which was led by cosmonaut Yuri Baturin, of which she is very proud.

Anastasia last year was at the Martian desert research station in Utah. She participated in the final selection of another competition, which aimed at modeling life on Mars.

Also, the girl is the co-author of the book about space for children. She now works in the PR department of a Singapore-based electronic gadget company.

As Anastasia told in an interview astro chanelShe is actively preparing for the next round of selection with the help of parachute jumps. Thus, she fights with her fears and is ready to continue breaking herself for the sake of a flight to Mars.

Anastasia’s mother wants to stop her daughter and, at every opportunity, introduces her to guys - the “Martian” found one applicant, half asleep, in her kitchen this morning. Mom hopes that her daughter will get married, give birth to a child and never fly anywhere. Anastasia is ready to sacrifice her personal life. Although she does not deny that she may fall in love with a crew member and they will have children with super powers, as she admitted in interview Channel 360 Moscow region.

Vladislav Stroganov - Moscow, Russia, lives in Germany, 24 years old, chemist

In his video presentationand Vladislav is dressed in a white robe and is periodically transferred to Mars. In reality, a young man is studying in graduate school at the Dresden Technical University and in six months he is going to defend his dissertation.

For his 24, Vladislav traveled all over Europe, lived in the USA. Before the flight to Mars, he is still going to have time to visit New Zealand.

Vladislav wants to be a pioneer and get into the top four settlers. At the same time, he generally believes that it is more effective to colonize not the red planet, but Europe, the satellite of Jupiter, where there are underground oceans.

Vladislav is skeptical about the prospect of training in America and does not really want to break away from his dissertation for the sake of it.

According to scientists, because of the low pressure in Martian conditions, it is impossible to bear a child. Vladislav admits that the colonists will try anyway. “Intentionally or accidentally. But we will be able to visually check what will come of it, ”he noted in interview Sandbox magazine.

Tatyana Medvedeva - Velikie Luki, Russia, lives in Switzerland, 32 years old, physicist

Tatiana graduates from the American University at Princeton and works at the Center for Nuclear Research in Switzerland at the Large Hadron Collider. But applied with video presentation She is like a Russian, and does not plan to change citizenship. The girl loves languages, mountaineering and often goes to work by bicycle.

Tatyana Medvedeva in the Alps. Photos from Tatyana Vkontakte page

Tatyana is one of the few family participants in the project. She has a boyfriend and a son who will be an adult at the time of the flight. So far the boy is against his mother flying away forever, but Tatyana is sure that her son will understand over time. “When he grows up, if he wants, he can also try to pass the competition and go to Mars... When was the last time you saw a young man of nihilistic age who would prefer an ordinary mother to his astronaut mother?” Tatyana explained in interview Sandbox magazine.

Sergey Yakimov - Zhitomir, Ukraine, 28 years old, engineer

Sergei dreamed of space since childhood, and when he grew up, he entered the Kiev Polytechnic Institute at the Faculty of Aerospace Systems. Then he went to work at the Ukrainian Space Research Institute.

A month ago, Sergei stopped paying his salary, and he left work. Rent in Kiev is expensive, so the young man went back to his parents, Zhytomyr. While he is mastering programming and preparing for the trip to the third stage of selection, he is also actively looking for sponsors who will help him pay the way.

It’s interesting that because of the prospect of a one-way flight, Sergei is not starting a relationship, but he doesn’t rule out the possibility that he won’t have to stay on Mars forever. “It is assumed that for the first 20-30 years we will not have the opportunity to return, and then, I think, such an opportunity will appear,” he said in newspaper "Echo"«.

Read Forum's interview with Sergei here.

Oksana Strelnikova - St. Petersburg, Russia, 27 years old, designer.

Oksana studied as a geographer, working as a graphic designer, but all her life she dreamed of space, as she admitted in interview the “Vesti” program. The girl was very surprised to see herself in the top 100 applicants. On Mars, she is going to become for some reason a geologist.

The decision to take part in Mars One for Oksana was not spontaneous. She liked the transparency of the program and the availability of clear plans with real deadlines. The absence of a return ticket does not frighten the future colonist. If she cares about something, it's flight safety.

For unknown reasons, Oksana maintains an online account under the name Eva * Oksi * Nikolina. She, like the other Russian finalists of Mars One, is in open group Vkontakte dedicated to the project.

Ekaterina Ilyinskaya - Moscow, Russia, 26 years old, fitness trainer

Catherine wants to fly to Mars for the love of extreme, as follows from her presentations. “I am a professional experience hunter and am constantly looking for new adventures. I hitchhiked around half the world for the sake of impressions,” she says on the project’s website.

Ekaterina was educated as a military psychologist, but spent her entire life connected with sports. Now works as a personal trainer. She is the 2012 Russian champion in bench press among juniors and the 2013 bronze champion of Russia in bench press.

Catherine actively preparing to further stages of selection, pulling up the English language and replenishing their knowledge about Mars, but the family has no plans to start.

Why the first crew member will die in 68 days

Although the Mars One project has received wide publicity, its founder, Bas Lansdorp, is not a space specialist, but a businessman. “All the technologies we need exist or almost exist. I just didn’t know how to finance it,” the inventor explained in New York Times interview. To find the money, Bas Landsorp and came up with a reality show shoot.

However, the thesis that all the technologies for the colonization of Mars already exist is a clear exaggeration. Recently, MIT graduates gave a presentation at the International Astronautics Congress and explained that in its current form, Mars One will end in disaster.

Death The first crew member will come in 68 days as a result of choking. The mechanism is as follows: growing plants will increase the amount of oxygen in a residential module to such a concentration that it will have to be ventilated outside the module, in order to avoid an increase in pressure. The problem is that oxygen must be separated from nitrogen, which is used to maintain pressure, before ventilation. And how to do it in terms of Mars from the point of view of science is not yet clear.

If everything remains as it is, the air pressure will drop to a level where people cannot breathe. At the same time oxygen will be enough to start a fire.

As the students concluded, in order not to catch fire, astronauts will have to grow plants in a separate module. Such a solution will require much more investment. Bringing food to Mars will be much more efficient than trying to produce it there.

Most likely, there is no one to solve such problems in Mars One: so, according to the investigation of the American magazine MediumThe company's staff consists of only three people, despite the fact that much more is stated on the site.

Lansdorp himself works - an inventor and entrepreneur, he is also the general director. Norbert Kraft is the doctor in charge of the medical side of the project, and he has experience working with NASA, the Japanese and Russian space agencies. Arno Wilders is a co-founder of the project, a physicist who combines the Mars One project with work at the European Space Agency.

Only time will tell whether these three are able to realize what so far has been beyond the power of the space superpowers with multi-million dollar budgets. It only remains to hope that if in ten years the first ship with colonists does fly to Mars, there will be one of the Russian-language finalists in the crew.