'Am I prepared to actually say goodbye?': Husband whose wife volunteered to go on controversial one-way Mars One mission explains how he and his sons will never see her again

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Sonia Van Meter, 36, was one of 100 people selected for Mars One
The project aims to send people to live on Mars in 12 years
Privately-funded mission is the idea of Dutch green energy entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp and has been widely attacked by scientists
Jason Stanford is Van Meter's husband
In an op-ed for Texas Monthly he describes his perspective

Published: 14:33 EST, 2 August 2015 | Updated: 16:06 EST, 2 August 2015

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A Virginia man has opened up about what it's like having a wife who volunteered to be part of the controversial Mars One mission - and the fact that, in just a few years, he and his sons are expected to say goodbye to her forever.

Jason Stanford refers to himself as an 'astronaut wife', because his actual wife and stepmother to his two sons, Sonia Van Meter, 36, was one of the people chosen for the Mars One Project, a privately-funded one-way mission which hopes to establish a permanent human colony on the red planet.

The first Mars One mission is slated to launch in 2026 - amid widespread criticism from scientists and space luminaries - with four people to touch down, and then another four every two years from there.

However Stanford and his wife - who live in Alexandria, Virginia, with his sons Henry, 13, and Hatcher, 11 - support the mission, and he has now accepted his own role as part of the process.

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A wife in space: Jason Stanford has described the process of accepting that his, Sonia Van Meter (pictured together) has been selected to go on a controversial mission to Mars and will never return

Family: Van Meter, a political consultant, is married to Stanford and stepmother to his sons Henry, 13, and Hatcher, 11. They live in Alexandria, Virginia

'This was bigger than me,' he wrote in a new feature for Texas Monthly.

'It raises existential questions far weightier than how much I’d miss Sonia and whether I remembered who our plumber was or knew where she kept all the passwords.'

'If it succeeds in its mission - establishing a sustainable colony on another planet - it would change the history of humanity by expanding our boundaries beyond this planet.'

Stanford speaks of how the men in the mission have been asked about how their wives feel, and how his wife slipped the situation around.

He explains that she has been attacked for abandoning her family.

He described the attacks as 'incendiary'.

'She’s been asked how she could abandon me more times than most people have been asked if they want fries with that,' he wrote.

Jason Stanford says he has accepted his wife leaving because the mission is 'beyond' him

Virginia woman says she's 'square' with husband on Mars trip

Van Meter has become something of a media celebrity because of the mission and, as Stanford explains, because she is good-looking and articulate.

She appeared on The Nightly Show in February, where she explained her reasons for staying with the mission amid the controversy it continues to cause, and despite the fact she's not an astronaut.

'We're going out there with a plan,' Van Meter said.

'The plan is not to go out there to die. It's to live.'

Among the questions the couple are routinely asked is their plans for future fidelity, their sex life, and one interviewer even asked Van Meter whether she will masturbate in space.

'This put me into a purple-faced rage that was diffused when a friend observed, “At least someone thinks your sex life is interesting''.'

Van Meter was part of the top 100 selected from an audition process that had, Mars One contends, over 200,000 applications.

However former NASA scientist Dr. Joseph Roche, who dramatically dropped out of Mars One in March, claimed that only about 3,000 had applied, and those that were chosen had 'bought' their way in.

Stanford's piece says his wife has not paid anything to be involved in the mission, which is the brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, who announced the project in May 2012

This illustration shows the pods that the colonists affiliated with Mars One will live in on the planet and use to grow their own food in the harsh environment

The piece then goes deeper and darker.

THE MARS ONE MISSION PLAN

The Mars One project plans to launch a supply mission to land on Mars as soon as October 2016.

A 'settlement rover' will then land in 2018.

The landing systems will be tested eight times before they are used to transport humans - a move that Mars One said will make the trips 'much safer than moon missions'.

The group said it aims to send four people to live on Mars in 2026, and then four more every two years after.

The private project - not affiliated with NASA - is the brainchild of Dutch green energy entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp.

He ominously explains how, after leaving earth, Van Meter will physically change.

'But if, a decade from now, I’m looking up at the rocket that will take her away from me forever, I’m going to have to expect that she’ll change not just in the way any of us are shaped by novel experiences but in ways humans have yet to experience,' he wrote.

'In fact, as Chris Impey argues in Beyond: Our Future in Space, Sonia will first stop being an earthling and next become something not quite (it’s hard to write this) human.'

Gravity, Impey says, is the main reason the body will physically change.

The women will also change significantly after having children.

A study in 2013 also suggested that the astronauts that go on Mars One will be exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation during the 253-day journey from Earth to Mars.

See Sonia Van Meter's audition tape for Mars One

This photo, from the Facebook of Sonia Van Meter, shows a Mars One meeting in process

Much of the radiation in space cannot be shielded, and there is a high chance the astronauts will contract different cancers.

This is one of the many aspects Stanford is trying to come to terms with.

'Imagine that you know you will be watching your spouse evolve on another planet before she dies of cancer inside of a decade,' he wrote.

'Imagine that everyone on Earth is watching with you.

'Now imagine that this idea no longer seems strange.'

However Stanford is also realistic about the mission.

Van Meter is set to start training next year, and a crucial high-tech isolation section will determine she has the compatibility to spend 24 hours a day with the other astronauts.