If You Love Lockdown, You’ll Love Mars! Aaron Clarke

While millions languish under lockdowns and closed borders, yearning to travel, a new kind of tourism is emerging, thanks to the mega-rich. In a strange way, the COVID-19 pandemic may be preparing us for an exotic travel experience: Mars. Sounds far-fetched, like science fiction? Just hear me out. The key lies in the intersection between luxury travel, adventure tourism and space exploration. The ‘final frontier’ promises to be the ultimate adventure for curious dreamers and thrill seekers alike. Space tourism is already a thing, from plane trips on the ‘Vomit Comet’ providing experiences of weightlessness to suborbital flights where passengers can see Earth’s curvature against the blackness of space—an awe- and adrenalinfilled excursion to match anything on the planet below.

None of it comes cheap, though. Corporate expansion into space is still in its infancy, bankrolled by Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, with other billionaires content to be paying passengers. Space tourism is currently a form of high-end luxury— an odd distillation of it, given luxury travel involves flying firstclass, five-star hotels and other enormously expensive, climatecontrolled environments insulating patrons from poor conditions. Being sealed off from the outside environment that way is kinda like … a spaceship!

Although the launch date for the manned mission keeps getting pushed back, Musk is investing serious money to settle Mars within a decade. It’s a different proposition to NASA’s Moon missions or the International Space Station orbiting Earth. You’d get to explore Mars—undoubtedly the experience of a lifetime— but always within the confines of a spacecraft, spacesuit or Mars-rover. No feeling the wind on your face or sand between your toes or potential asphyxiation.

Those high-achieving iterations of the astronaut might go crazy during a roundtrip to Mars. Some psychologists think a nerdy homebody more likely possesses the requisite equanimity over the long haul. Ironically, not currently allowed to venture far, many folks would have an idea how well they’d fare on that tour.

So, if during an extended COVID-19 lockdown, you were content keeping things ticking over behind sealed windows, staying connected with loved ones by posting messages, bingeing on home entertainment or reading books—and not tempted to murder housemates— then you may just love a trip to Mars.