Mars One: Humanity's Next Great Adventure: Inside the First Human Settlement on Mars

Description

You may not be able to go to Mars yourself, but thanks to Mars One, you can follow along as Mars's first permanent human settlers prepare for their mission-and now, with Mars One: Humanity's Next Great Adventure, you can step inside the experience of these astronaut pioneers as they live out the dreams of millions. In 2013, Mars One announced their intentions to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars beginning as early as 2024; they launched their astronaut selection program and received thousands of applications. In 2015, a documentary reality series will give the world a window into the captivating details of the crew selection and training process. Mars One: Humanity's Next Great Adventure, timed to release alongside the show, explores the various human dimensions of Mars One's planned expeditions to Mars. Edited by Norbert Kraft, MD, Mars One's Chief Medical Officer and head of crew selection and training, and James R. Kass, PhD, and Raye Kass, PhD, the other two members of the Mars One crew selection and training committee, the collection of scientists, psychologists, historians, and others provides a behind-the-scenes look at the process and criteria used to choose candidates, as well as fascinating details about their future life on Mars. What essential skills and training with the Mars One astronauts need to get to and then survive on Mars? What combination of genders and ages make for the most effective four-person crew? How do individuals' cultural backgrounds factor in? Will settlers be able to communicate with Earth? What can the Mars One mission learn from past periods of human exploration? What are the complexities of a group of four, and ultimately hundreds, operating with complete independence from human societies on Earth? What are the psychological ramifications of knowing your actions are being watched by millions of people? What does Mars One hope watching the process will mean for viewers at home? The book also includes excerpts from official Mars One documents, including candidate questionnaires, and excerpts of letters from prospective crew members.

Norbert Kraft, MD, received "The NASA Group Achievement Award 2013," one of the most prestigious awards a group can receive, presented to selected groups who have distinguished themselves by making outstanding contributions to the NASA mission. In 2010, Kraft received the 2010 Award for "Outstanding Accomplishments in the Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of Aerospace Medicine." He has over 20 years of experience in aviation and aerospace research and development. His primary area of expertise is developing physiological and psychological countermeasures to combat the negative effects of long-duration spaceflight. Dr. Kraft's experiences span Europe, Asia, and the United States, where he has worked for several international space agencies, including the Russian Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency. Dr. Kraft is an author of over 40 papers in the field of aerospace medicine, including a seminal paper on intercultural crew issues in long-duration spaceflight. He has an M.D. from University of Vienna, Austria, and is a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association. Dr. James R. Kass has been working in the field of human spaceflight for more than 30 years. He was an investigator on the first Spacelab mission in the early 80s in the field of neurophysiology. In the decade following, he gained industrial experience at several aerospace companies in Germany, before joining the European Space Agency at its research and technology centre, ESTEC, in the Netherlands. Dr. Kass has trained astronauts and worked on the ground operations teams for several Spacelab /Space Shuttle and MIR missions (including the tragic STS-107), with crews from Russia, USA, Middle and Far East, and several European countries. He has also worked with cosmonauts of the former Salyut space station and astronauts of the first US space station, Skylab. He has participated as scientist and reviewer in several isolation experiments investigating psychology of long-duration isolation, as one will certainly encounter on Mars. Dr. Raye Kass, Professor of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, currently spearheads group theory courses in both the undergraduate and graduate level. Dr. Kass has been highlighted frequently by both national and international press agencies for both her space sciences and group theory research. Dr. Kass has also been invited to be involved in numerous space research projects in conjunction with the Canadian Space Agency and NASA, including the Psychological Experiment / Training Programme for the CAPSULS Mission held in Canada, the SFINCCS mission held in Russia, and the NSBRI (National Space Biomedical Research Institute) Ground-based Research Project with the NASA Ames Research Centre in the USA. Dr. Kass is the author of Theories of Small Group Development, as well as the coauthor of three other books on group theory.

"Mars One (the book) will feed the imagination of anyone with an interest in space or the future of humanity on other worlds." --Foreword Reviews