Mars One is a non-profit organisation that has publicised its plans for sending people to the red planet in batches of four to establish a permanent colony there.
Thus, the organisers asked for volunteers and by last year almost a quarter million people from 107 countries had applied of which about a thousand (including 62 Indians) were shortlisted for the uber-risky, seven-month-long one way trip.
Risky because the entirely untried enterprise absolutely seethes with unknown dangers and the vanguard crew could simply perish on the way itself. The planet too is utterly inhospitable to life with no breathable air or easily accessible water and totally lacking in vegetation or other potential food.
Besides, the place is constantly battered by lethal radiation while the temperature can drop to a marrow freezing -100 degrees Celsius.
Yet a selected thousand people are perfectly willing to undertake this obviously suicidal mission, forsaking family, friends and home forever to live on an unforgiving planet some 200 million kilometres away where even a completely treatable condition like appendicitis would result in certain death.
What kind of person does this?
In a sense such a person has to be a spiritual atheist of a wholly different kind who probably requires no pull of any earthly creed to keep tugging and tying him or her down. A person who perhaps believes that something greater is not up or out there but inside which ultimately has to be actualised or it would make no sense.
As one 70-year-old said in his application video: “To die on an alien planet — who could ask for more?” Who indeed.
(This piece first appeared in The Economic Times)