A Mission of Optimism

SHIPYARD SPOTLIGHT 16 THINGS YOU DIDN'T

Oscar Mathews

KNOW ABOUT

Oscar

1. My favorite colors are Corvette blue and Mars red.

2. If I had a superpower, it would be to travel wherever I want.

3. Right now, my favorite movie is Interstellar.

4. I'm a Leo. 5. My favorite TV show of all time is Star Trek: the Next Generation.

6. The most played song on my iPod is probably by Muse or maybe Nirvana.

7. I’m a lapsed trumpet player. I also dabbled in violin, piano, and guitar.

8. My favorite food is Paella.

9. My favorite place to visit is Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. It’s outrageously beautiful.

10. I’m a little embarrassed to admit I love Star Trek.

11. I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut.

12. My celebrity crush is either Kiera Knightley or Natalie Portman.

13. My motto is “Never give up.”

14. My least favorite chore is folding my clothes.

15. If they make a movie about my life, Tom Cruise would play me.

16. In four words, I’m driven, passionate, impatient, and visionary.

18 • SERVICE TO THE FLEET • MAY 2015

A Mission of Optimism

By ANNA TAYLOR • PUBLIC AFFAIRS SPECIALIST Oscar Mathews is a Navy Lieutenant Commander, an Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. student, and an aspiring Martian. His dream is to be one of the first 24 humans to colonize Mars, a seemingly far-fetched fantasy that may actually be possible as early as 2026, thanks to an organization called Mars One. Mars One is a not-for-profit foundation with the goal of establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars. The first unmanned mission is scheduled to depart in 2020, followed by the first four-person crews two years later. More than 200,000 people began the application for the training program, a number that has been whittled down to 100 through a measured selection process and will be reduced to 24 later this year.

So what inspires a man to trade his home on the banks of the Nansemond River for the faraway isolation of a cold alien planet? The dream began when he was a child. Mathews, a Nuclear Engineer in the Nuclear Engineering and Planning Department’s Reactor Support Branch (Code 2310.1), was born in Madrid, Spain, and moved to Texas when he was five.

At the age of 18, Mathews was naturalized an American citizen, allowing a future in the U.S. Armed Forces. His family’s military tradition kindled his passion for aviation, but

Mathews gives most of the credit to a certain TV show for fostering his love of space. “My dad worked on aircraft and my granddad was in the Air Force as well,” he said. “We always went to air shows, I was always around jets, but I got interested in space through Star Trek.

I loved the idea of being able to fly anywhere, just punch in the coordinates and go.” That same love of adventure and freedom led him to earn his private pilot’s license and SCUBA certification.

Mathews graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 2004 and served in the military for five years. In 2011, once Mathews had completed his master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, he attended a career fair where NAVSEA was recruiting, and after being convinced that submarines are a lot like spacecraft, he found himself starting work at Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY). In 2013, Mathews “felt a call back to service,” and joined the Navy Reserves to further his experience in aerospace.

Mars One’s plans were publicly announced in 2012. “When it first came out, it made sense to me,” said Mathews.

“Everybody’s been talking about going to Mars soon, yet it’s always been 50 years away.

One reason NASA’s plan continuously gets

NNSY NUCLEAR ENGINEER AMONG 100 FINALISTS FOR MARS MISSION

pushed back is because they are trying to transport the people they send to Mars back to Earth. You absolutely do not need to do that. You don’t need the heroes to come back for the parades and handshaking. If humans want to go somewhere and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to do it, then we should go to the surface where the important science is, and stay there.” Coming back to Earth is the most expensive part of a mission. By eliminating the return trip, Mars One will cut the cost, danger, and radiation exposure by more than half.

Despite support from notable ambassadors – including an astronaut, Nobel Prize laureate, and former NASA Chief Technologist – Mars One has been greeted with more skepticism than support. “It’s natural that a lot of criticism and doubt is going to come out of the woodwork,” said Mathews, who was himself initially doubtful of the mission’s feasibility. After completing his own research, those early uncertainties gave way to intrigue followed by full-blown conviction that a trip to Mars is possible within 10 years.

“It’s healthy to have an amount of good faith critical review, but it’s the pessimism, it’s the people who needlessly carry doubt, those who perhaps don’t understand space as well as they

claim. It’s frustrating, but you’re always going to have people who don’t feel exploration is a human imperative. In my opinion, the survival of the human species depends on our ability to go to places we haven’t been and to find the science to help us survive and thrive in those places.”

Mathews, who speaks about space exploration with passionate inflection, compares Mars One’s mission to the formation of the Jamestown colony. “[The founders] had so much trouble getting funding. People laughed at it. Not many understood why people would want to go to the wilderness when London was such a great place to be. Had those early explorers not left, had there not been that exploratory spirit, then we likely wouldn’t be sitting here talking about how great America is—at least not in English.”

Unmanned missions to the red planet are fairly restricted in their scientific gains relative to the contributions that could be made by people. Opportunity, a Mars Exploration Rover that has been on the surface since 2004, travelled only 26 miles in the last 11 years, even though it’s the fastest rover. “We invest much in these rovers, but they are really limited in what they can do compared to

humans,” said Mathews. “If we had humans on the surface, not only can you immediately confirm what the rover is sensing, you could actually go to specific places, take samples at thousands of locations, and travel for hundreds of kilometers.”

The greatest hurdle is not the technology or the engineering; it’s finding the right kind of people to settle a new planet. Mars One is looking for a balance of genders and a diverse mix of geographic origins, ethnicities, backgrounds, and professional specialties of the selectees. “I think my engineering background will help, and the preparation I have from the shipyard will help. So who knows, maybe on Mars we’ll eventually need to design new shielding or analyze contamination, and I’ll be the guy.”

There are resources on Mars like gold and platinum, and the settlers will have to resist the urge to repeat history. “When Spain went to Mexico, the conquistadors were there to take advantage of the local people and local resources,” said Mathews. “They had no respect for the environment. It was a colonial mindset where only Spain benefitted. And we can’t do that.” (continued on next page...)

colonists Who are the Mars 100 Round Three candidates? There are 50 men and 50 women who successfully passed the second round. The candidates come from all around the world, namely 39 from the Americas, 31 from Europe, 16 from Asia, 7 from Africa, and 7 from Oceania. To learn more about the "Mars 100," visit www.mars-one.com.

20 • SERVICE TO THE FLEET • MAY 2015

”

THE MARS ONE

There have to be people, at critical moments in human history, who understand the risks and understand that it could end up killing them but who still want to leave and test themselves against the odds. - Oscar Mathews (continued from previous page...)

Mathews made it through the last round of cuts early this year and is among the remaining 100 finalists, (including only 33 Americans). Once the field is narrowed down to 24, the candidates will be tested on their technical skills, resourcefulness, creativity, resilience to isolation, and teamwork; if Mathews is chosen, he will have to dedicate the next eight or more years of his life to training for the mission. “If you’re in the space station and there’s a critical breakdown, you’re getting on the Soyuz capsule and you’re coming back.

You have the ability to come back, and you know that in the back of your head. If you’re on Mars, you need people who understand that in the worst case scenario, you are on your own. You can’t go back to Earth. So psychologically, what are you going to do?

You are not just going to give up.”

The settlers will be taught to fill cavities and mend broken bones. They will find out if they can tolerate another person’s body odor in a confined space and whether or not they have the mental capacity to stave off boredom during a long, monotonous journey. “You can make the argument that a submarine crew would be the perfect group to send to Mars,” said Mathews. “They can deal with loneliness, emergencies, and highly stressful situations. You know they’re doing it for the mission and not the personal gain. There are plenty of easier things to do in life than to be underwater for three to six months, and that’s exactly who Mars One wants.”

Mathews was recently accepted at Old Dominion University to begin work on a Ph.D. in Space Radiation Shielding. “It could also be applied to habitat shielding on the surface [of Mars],” said Mathews. “What that does is reduce the amount of solar protons and other highmass ions that the human body gets exposed to on the trip to Mars, and then once you get there, instead of having to find a natural crater or having to dig a trench or depression

and then cover the habitat with regolith, you can just have it land in any location and build or deploy a habitat radiation shield using superconducting magnets.”

Mathews has also proposed various plans to create revenue to support the settlement on the surface of Mars; one of which eliminates the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars delivering rovers [from Earth]. The settlers could make them using a 3-D printer and materials they already have (plus a little assistance from Earth to procure sensors and high tech items). “Batteries, circuit traces, chassis…we can make all that. Then you can either sell it or lease it, so if a university has 20 or 30 interested students, they can pay to go explore an area and take samples by the hour.

The rover would eventually pay for itself. And then you get young people, young engineers, scientists, and mathematicians at high schools and universities around the world excited about doing something only NASA could have done before.”

Adjusting to life on a new rock may be a challenge at first, but that’s part of the appeal for Mathews. “If we’re going to Mars, the idea is to study it without changing it too much.

We don’t try to make Colorado like Florida.

It’s enjoyable because it’s so different. And if we try to make Mars like Earth, you destroy what Mars is, and you lose the romance of going to this really alien place. ” If Mathews is not one of the 24 Mars One settlers, his life will certainly go on, and he will continue to be an outspoken advocate for space exploration. He’s got the support of his family and an understanding girlfriend who would be sad if he left. “There’s plenty to discover and experience on Earth,” he says. “The point for me is that I would like to see humans on another planet within our lifetimes, so we have a backup of human culture and inspire a new generation of explorers. There have to be people, at critical moments in human history, who understand the risks and understand that it could end up killing them but who still want to leave and test themselves against the odds.” ■