If things go according to plan, Paige Hunter will leave her family and friends in New Westminster in 2024 and never come back.
Hunter, 19, is the youngest on an ever-shrinking list of aspiring astronauts hoping to go to Mars as part of a program by the not-for-profit foundation, Mars One, which aims to establish a human settlement on the red planet.
In December the Netherland-based foundation announced it had whittled down the candidates from 200,000 to 1058 hopefuls and in May that number was reduced to 705 (418 men and 287 women).
After she made it through the first round, Hunter said she and the other applicants who hail from all corners of the globe, had to submit the results of a series of medical tests. She passed.
Hunter first heard about the Mars mission about a year ago from her high school chemistry teacher. There was a $40 application fee, but the only criteria to apply were to be 18 or older, physically fit and keen.
“I couldn’t pass it up,” she said.
“It is unprecedented in human history to travel to a different planet, so that is the ultimate legacy.”
Once settled on Mars the team will perform geological studies and explore.
“I think of it like Star Trek,” Hunter said.
She isn’t worried about it being a one-way trip.
“There will be things happening on Earth I will miss out on, but then I think that everyone on Earth is missing out on things happening on Mars, so you just trade one thing for another.”
Only four people, two women and two men, will go on the first manned mission, but loneliness isn’t a concern for Hunter either because she said the plan is for more crews to arrive every two years.
Hunter said her mom, a lawyer, is against the whole idea because it is too dangerous. Her father David, also a lawyer, is skeptical, but supportive..
“The fact that it is 10 years down the road or more, by that point the parenting will have ended and if that is truly what she wanted to do with her life I would have to say, ‘well, go for it,’” he said.
He said he has known his daughter was tough and determined since he took her to Long Beach on Vancouver Island when she was three-years-old.
“Where a lot of kids would walk for half a block and want to sit down and be carried, she would literally walk for miles,” he said.
Hunter started mountain climbing with her dad when she was 13-years-old with a trek to the summit of Mount Shuksan in Washington State, carrying a 20-kilogram pack on her back.
Since then she has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and several other mountains in the United States and Switzerland.
When The Record caught up with Hunter Monday, she was at the airport en route to Salt Lake City to meet up with her climbing coach to prepare for her upcoming July climb of Monte Rosa, the highest mountain in Switzerland.
Her adventurous spirit and physical fitness will likely help her survive this summer’s regional interviews, which are the next round of the Mars One selection process.
She said she is as ready as she can be.
A quick Internet search shows there are many who question if the mission is actually possible.
The mission will cost an estimated US$6 billion. According to the Mars One website, the foundation has so far raised US$573,923 from private and corporate donations.
Hunter believes the mission will happen, but questions the proposed timeline. The first unmanned Mars trip is planned for 2018.
If the manned mission doesn’t pan out, she has other plans.
“I would want a job with the United Nations or the Red Cross or the Canadian Foreign Service,” she said.
Hunter will study international relations at McGill University in the fall.
For more information on the mission go to www.mars-one.com.
