Humans have yet to set foot on Mars, but one British woman already wants to be the first to give birth on the red planet.
Maggie Lieu, 24, is an astrophysics Ph. D. candidate at Birmingham University. She is also one of 600 people being considered for the Mars One project, which hopes to set up a permanent colony on Mars by 2025.
Lieu will find out next month if she will join 39 other people who will actually train for the one-way trip to the red planet.
If Lieu makes it to Mars, she plans to get busy colonizing the planet.
“To start a colony we would have to have children on Mars, eventually it would happen," she said, according to the Mirror. "It would be challenging, nobody has done any research on giving birth in a low-gravity environment. I think it would be a funny thing because the first child born on Mars would be the first Martian!"
The planetary pioneer will also have to contend with struggles far more daunting than trying to find a babysitter last minute.
Things like high potentials of starvation or dehydration and lethal levels of radiation, not to mention the fact that Martian nights can dip 81 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
Lieu isn't worried.
"I don’t think it would be much different to some of the living conditions and relationships people have with their children here on Earth,” she said, according to the Coventry Telegraph.
If all goes according to plan for Mars One, unmanned vehicles are scheduled to shoot off to the planet starting in 2018. In 2024, the first four humans will be sent, with four more every two years after that.
Lieu will spend nearly a decade learning a wide array of new skills including medicine, agriculture, plumbing and electronics if she makes it to Mars.
More importantly for her goal of becoming a Martian mom: Deciding which man gets to father her child. Since there are only 40 people going to Mars at first, there will be a small pool of men to choose from.
She told the Express that she and the settlers will be isolated from the rest of the world, giving her a lot of time to get know her baby's father very well.
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