Why Downtown artist Reid Stowe is training the first Mars explorers

One small sketch for man…

A veteran of the 1980s Soho art scene is helping to prepare people to go to Mars.

Reid Stowe, who was pals with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Julian Schnabel, Anthony Haden-Guest and other staples of the Downtown art explosion, also became an elite endurance sailor.

And it turns out the mental rigors of spending over a thousand days at sea may be the best way to prepare the mind for the voyage to the Red Planet.

“The seafarers of today provide a role model for the spacefarers of tomorrow,” Stowe, 72, told Page Six.

Stowe, who spent a record 1,152 consecutive days at sea without touching land, now takes aspiring astronauts, engineers and space scientists on ocean voyages designed to test the resilience, self-reliance and mental toughness needed for deep-space travel.

“In the space community it’s called analog training,” he explained. “You’re not actually in space, but you’re recreating many of the same physical and psychological challenges.”

Unlike large ships, Stowe says a small sailboat leaves people exposed to isolation, confinement, uncertainty and the constant need to solve problems with limited resources — conditions he believes closely mirror life aboard a spacecraft headed for Mars.

In fact, Stowe believes sea voyages and missions to Mars are so similar — in both duration and the psychological challenges they present — that he named his record-setting expedition “Mars Ocean Odyssey.”

Many of the people he trains hope to work in space exploration as engineers, astrobiologists or future astronauts. Stowe says some specifically want ocean experience on their résumés because future Mars crews will need people capable of building, repairing and maintaining equipment while living in extreme isolation.

According to Stowe, humans could reach Mars within the next 10 to 15 years — and the 72-year-old even believes he could still be around to captain the first crewed mission himself. “I believe I am the most qualified person to captain the first crewed mission to Mars,” he said, adding, “That’s still one of my goals.”

The unusual career marks a dramatic second act for Stowe, who was once part of Manhattan’s legendary 1980s art scene. Basquiat admired him enough to paint a life-size portrait of him in 1985, writing “Reid” across the canvas before giving it to him.

Years later, Stowe sold the painting — not to buy real estate or expand an art collection, but to finance the voyage that would make him a sailing legend.

Today, as SpaceX pushes toward eventual human missions to Mars, Stowe says his decades alone at sea have convinced him that the greatest challenge won’t be the rocket — it will be the human mind.