Dutch nonprofit Mars One announced Thursday that if you donate money or buy some swag from their shop, you’ll be entered in a raffle for a trip to sub-orbital space. “Ticket to Rise” is an effort to help fund a test Mars mission in a recreated environment on Earth in 2015 and a demo mission to actual Mars by robots in 2018. Assuming those missions are a success, Mars One wants to send four astronauts on a one way trip to Mars in 2025, and keep adding astronauts every year. Unlike other high profile space trips, this ticket is mercifully round-trip. The winner of the raffle will fly on X-Core’s single passenger Lynx ship, tickets for which normally cost $95,000.
Even if you don’t win, it’s a good cause. Space colonization has become less of a governmental priority lately, so private organizations have been forced to pick up the slack. Even if we don’t get climate-changed to death, kill ourselves with nuclear weapons or get hit by an asteroid, the sun will still start dying in 5 billion years, so getting off the planet at some point matters.
On that note, we recommend the Mars and Me selfie. They’ll put your picture on a monitor attached to the their satellite, then take a photo of you and Mars together. So you get to go to space either way, so it’s a win-win. (Image: Mars One)
