The Next Startup Frontier: Mars?

By Jason Fell | Dec 12, 2013
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Perhaps someday your next best customers will be Martians. Well, not Martian in the traditional sense, anyway.

A Dutch initiative called has ambitious plans: to send four people to colonize the red planet by 2024. Another crew of four will follow two years later. Another two years after that. And so on. The catch, of course, is that they will not come back to Earth.

During a five-month application period which ended this fall, the group says more than 200,000 people signed up to be among the first four people to live on Mars.

Here’s the Mars One video explaining the project:

Mars One has contracted Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. to develop mission concept studies for an unmanned mission to the planet in 2018, including a robotic lander and a communications satellite. Among the lander’s “highest priorities” will be to conduct an experiment demonstrating how , Mars One chief executive Bas Lansdorp told CNN.

To help fund the unmanned mission, Mars One has a . It’s hoping to raise $400,000.

While the project still faces some major hurdles and is a long ways from becoming a reality, it does point to some entertaining possibilities for the future of human civilization. Where people go, business opportunities follow, right?

Related: These Famous People Have Tickets for Richard Branson’s Space Flights

Perhaps someday your next best customers will be Martians. Well, not Martian in the traditional sense, anyway.

A Dutch initiative called has ambitious plans: to send four people to colonize the red planet by 2024. Another crew of four will follow two years later. Another two years after that. And so on. The catch, of course, is that they will not come back to Earth.

During a five-month application period which ended this fall, the group says more than 200,000 people signed up to be among the first four people to live on Mars.

Here’s the Mars One video explaining the project:

Mars One has contracted Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. to develop mission concept studies for an unmanned mission to the planet in 2018, including a robotic lander and a communications satellite. Among the lander’s “highest priorities” will be to conduct an experiment demonstrating how , Mars One chief executive Bas Lansdorp told CNN.

To help fund the unmanned mission, Mars One has a . It’s hoping to raise $400,000.

While the project still faces some major hurdles and is a long ways from becoming a reality, it does point to some entertaining possibilities for the future of human civilization. Where people go, business opportunities follow, right?

Related: These Famous People Have Tickets for Richard Branson’s Space Flights

Jason Fell • VP, Native Content

Âé¶¹Éç Staff
Jason Fell is the VP of Native Content, managing the Âé¶¹Éç Partner Studio, which creates... Read more
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