First Manned Mission To Mars Is Taking Applicants To Go On A Ride To The Red Planet

It's finally happening, we're now going from sending machines to Mars, to sending human beings on a trip to the red planet in the first ever manned mission to Mars!  The conditions of the trip through space wont exactly be comfortable, it'll be worse than riding on a plane that's going through terrible turbulence while stuck between 2 fat and sweating guys that are crying because they hate flying and the staff isn't serving drinks so you have to be coherent during the entire thing.  Still, applicants to be on the 1st manned mission to mars are flooding in to be on the ship that makes history.

These applicants, if chosen, will literally be looking death in the face.  They'll be crammed into what's been described as "an RV that travels through space".  The ride last more than a year and they'll be breathing recycled air.  They'll have to live off dehydrated foods and to make matters worse, to wash that nasty food down, they'll be drinking their own urine after it's been purified.  If anyone dies on the mission, their body will be freeze-dried in a body bag and if they survive, they'll have to come back to planet Earth and enter our atmosphere at an astounding 8.8 miles per second!

Even with all these factors, the applications to be on the manned mission to the 4th planet from the Sun are coming in left and right!

Yahoo News reports on the dangerous, yet ground breaking mission:

"Speaking at the National Space Symposium here, members of the Inspiration Mars Foundation described the challenges inherent in launching two humans on a 501-day flyby journey to the Red Planet and back in January 2018, but remained optimistic that those challenges aren't insurmountable.

"So far, we haven't come up with any show-stoppers, so that's exciting," said Jane Poynter, president of the Paragon Space Development Corp., which has partnered with Inspiration Mars. [Private Manned Mars Mission (Gallery)]"

The goal is to send two people, a man and a woman, possibly a married couple, on a 501 day there and back fly-by around Mars in January 2018. The positions of Earth and Mars are then ideal for such a quick trip, the next opportunity like that won't come around until 2031! So getting the mission for January of 2018 is imperative unless we want to wait another 18 years instead of 5 years.

Yahoo News continues with:

The date also coincides with an 11-year solar minimum, meaning the Inspiration Mars crew will be exposed to less solar radiation than during other launch windows, officials said.

Millionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first space tourist in 2001and unveiled Inspiration Mars' "Mission for America" in February 2013 plans to fund the Inspiration Mars Foundation for the first two years with his own money, with private donations covering the rest of the mission's costs.

It's not going to be easy, but something of this nature isn't made to be easy.  It's a challenge and as human beings, we like a good challenge, even if it means risking our lives to further our knowledge of the universe.

This will be one small leap for man, and one gigantic jump for all mankind!