Mars One - Human settlement of Mars in 2023

[Geo]

Heh, I bet they mean the map is going to Mars in digital form.

[Buster's Uncle]

And they're taking Sarah's large hole with them.

[JarlWolf]

I am imagining way too many innuendo's involving digging and inserting equipment jokes with these names 
Edit: And probing 

[Buster's Uncle]

Meet the Volunteers Willing to Go to Mars and Never Come Back
Trending Now
7 hours ago



Over 200,000 people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. A new digital short interviews five of those prospective Mars astronauts to find out who they are and why they would want to become a part of history.

"Mars One Way" documents the thought process of Cody Reeder, Casey Hunter, Will Robbins, Katelyn Kane, and Ken Sullivan. The five applicants all come from different backgrounds but have one similarity: they are more curious about life on Mars than attached to their current living situation on Earth.

"How do you react when your husband says, 'Guess what? It's one way. I'm not coming back'?" asks Becky Sullivan. If chosen, her husband, Ken, would leave the family, including their two kids, behind. "I'm kind of in the 'It's not real' phase right now."

"There's a lot more drama in our relationship lately, about the reality of, are you choosing family or are you choosing Mars?" adds Ken. "My little boy Connor, if he just came up to me and said, 'Dad, don't go,' that would probably change my mind."

The whole situation sounds as if it were lifted from a movie at best or an elaborate prank at worst. But it's all real life. Of the other volunteers profiled, a couple said they could change their mind. Hunter could be swayed away from the trip if he proposed to his girlfriend. Reeder said his girlfriend's telling him not to go might make him think otherwise.

That said, Hunter compares his life to that of a "turd in the toilet bowl of life. I just kind of float." And before mentioning his girlfriend, the professional beekeeper Reeder says he would miss his bees the most. They might be all in after all.

Mars One is a nonprofit organization created by Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders. Their goal is to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. According to the project's website, astronaut training will begin next year. The first group of volunteers is set to depart in 2024.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/meet-the-volunteers-willing-to-go-to-mars-and-never-come-back-191710586.html?vp=1

[Buster's Uncle]

One-Way Mars Colony Project to Simulate Red Planet on Earth
SPACE.com
by Megan Gannon, News Editor  21 hours ago



All components of Mars One's settlement are slated to reach their destination by 2021. The hardware includes two living units, two life-support units, a second supply unit and two rovers.



A audacious project to send volunteers on a one-way colony trip to Mars is drawing up plans for simulation outposts on Earth to give potential Red Planet settlers a taste of Martian life.

Mars One announced their plans for mock Martian colonies Thursday (March 27), though the nonprofit hasn't picked a location for the first simulator yet.

"We are very eager to get started constructing actual hardware for our mission that is important for training future Mars One crews and preparing them for their life on Mars," Bas Lansdorp, co-founder of Mars One, said in a statement. "We are going from theory to practice."

Lansdorp hopes to put astronaut bootprints on the Red Planet by 2025. But the first Mars One colonists won't be coming back to Earth. Instead they'll live out their days in a thick-walled habitat, protected against harmful solar particles and cosmic rays, donning spacesuits to go outside in a place that lacks a breathable atmosphere. The mock habitats would attempt to recreate those isolated conditions, though at first, they won't contain actual life support systems that humans would need to survive on Mars.

Mars One also announced Thursday that it chose NASA contractor and capsule designer Kristian von Bengtson to lead the outpost project from Denmark.

Mars One's earthbound "colonies" would hardly mark the first simulated Mars missions. The Mars Desert Research Station was established in Utah a decade ago to serve as an analog to the Red Planet during mock missions. An international crew of six lived in isolation for nearly a year and a half in a pretend spaceship in Moscow for the Mars500 project, which was carried out by the European Space Agency and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems.

More than 200,000 people sent in applications for a spot on a Mars One voyage. Out of that huge pool, 1,058 aspiring spaceflyers were selected to move on to the next round in December 2013. Eventually, just six groups of four will be chosen to become full-time employees of the Mars One astronaut corps. Company officials have said they hope to broadcast parts of their selection process on a reality television show.

Mars One contends that it's possible to establish a settlement on Mars with existing technologies, such as modified Dragon capsules built by the private company SpaceX. The company hopes to first launch an unmanned demonstration and satellite mission in 2018 before beginning manned flights in 2025. The group recently raised more than $300,000 in a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to help get that robotic mission off the ground.

http://news.yahoo.com/one-way-mars-colony-project-simulate-red-planet-220852528.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Private Mars One Colony Project Signs Deal with TV Production Company
SPACE.com
by Mike Wall, Senior Writer  1 hour ago



All components of Mars One's settlement are slated to reach their destination by 2021. The hardware includes two living units, two life-support units, a second supply unit and two rovers.



The next big reality-TV star may be an aspiring Mars colonist.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four settlers on the Red Planet in 2025, announced today (June 2) that it has signed a deal with Darlow Smithson Productions (DSP), an Endemol-owned company, to film its astronaut selection and training process.

"Our team felt all along that we needed a partner whose strength lies in factual storytelling to an international audience," Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "DSP will provide that to Mars One, while allowing our selection committee to maintain control of the applicant selection process. This really is a perfect fit for both of us."

DSP's production will be seen around the world, with the first installments likely appearing in early 2015, Mars One representatives said. More details about the coverage plan will be revealed soon, they added.

Mars One hopes the 2025 landing establishes a permanent and growing Red Planet colony, with more settlers arriving every two years thereafter. The organization plans to pay its bills primarily by staging a global media event around the settlement effort, from astronaut selection to the colonists' time on Mars.

"It is a great privilege for DSP to be chosen to exclusively follow the incredible journeys of those who will make humankind's first footprint on Mars," Iain Riddick, DSP's head of special projects and digital media, said in a statement. "This has to be the world's toughest job interview for what is without question a world-first opportunity, and the human stories that emerge will captivate and inspire generations across the globe."

There will be some spaceflight action before the first launch of humans toward Mars. Mars One plans to mount several unmanned missions in the next 10 years to demonstrate required technologies and prepare the ground for the arrival of people. A robotic lander and orbiter are scheduled to lift off in 2018, for example, followed by a scouting rover in 2020 and six cargo missions in 2022.

More than 200,000 people applied to become Mars One astronauts. That pool has been slashed to 705 candidates, who are now being evaluated by a panel of experts during a series of interviews.

The applicants signed on to live out the rest of their lives on Mars; at the moment, there are no plans to bring any of the Red Planet pioneers back to Earth.

DSP has produced many documentaries and TV programs over the years, including "Earth from Space" for NOVA and Discovery Canada and "Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon" for BBC Two.

http://news.yahoo.com/private-mars-one-colony-project-signs-deal-tv-235239086.html

---

Hey, I'll watch - but I still don't see reality shows paying the bills.

[Buster's Uncle]

Endemol’s DSP to Film Mission to Send Man to Mars
Variety
By Leo Barraclough  16 hours ago






LONDON — Endemol-owned docu production house Darlow Smithson Prods. has inked an exclusive pact with Mars One, an org that aims to set up a human settlement on the Red Planet. DSP will film the mission to send the first astronauts to Mars — on a one-way ticket.

DSP will follow the selection and training of the 705 candidates hoping to become the first astronauts on Mars, who have been chosen from more than 200,000 applicants. From those candidates, the four crew members of the first mission will be selected.

In order to qualify for the mission, each individual must show that they have acquired the knowledge and skills as well as the high levels of psychological and physical performance needed to make the 300 million mile, one-way trip, and to establish the settlement.

Mars One claims that human settlement on Mars is possible with existing technologies.  However, no return trip can be made. Instead Mars One will send additional crews every two years to further build the colony.

The first instalments of DSP’s production are expected to begin broadcasting early next year.  Further details are due to follow soon.

Bas Lansdorp, co-founder and CEO of Mars One, said: “Bringing the story of our incredibly brave aspiring Martians to the world now officially begins with what we feel is a perfect partnership. Our team felt all along that we needed a partner whose strength lies in factual storytelling to an international audience.  DSP will provide that to Mars One, while allowing our selection committee to maintain control of the applicant selection process.”

Work on Mars One’s first unmanned mission to the planet is scheduled for launch in 2018, and it plans to land the first crew on Mars by 2025. The search for astronauts began in April 2013.

http://news.yahoo.com/endemol-dsp-film-mission-send-man-mars-100745494.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Mars One Wants to Send Your Experiments to the Red Planet
SPACE.com
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer  10 hours ago



The non-profit Mars One organization wants to send a lander to the Red Planet in 2018. The lander will have seven different science payloads, and people everywhere can submit their ideas to the organization now.



The nonprofit organization that has raised eyebrows with its plans to send people on a one-way mission to Mars is now accepting proposals for scientific payloads that could fly aboard an unmanned mission to the Red Planet in 2018.

The Netherlands-based Mars One foundation aims to send a total of seven payloads: four demonstration payloads, one payload selected in a worldwide university competition and two payloads for sale to the highest bidder.

The unmanned 2018 mission will serve as preparation for a planned human mission to Mars in 2024, Mars One organizers said. As of May, the nonprofit had whittled down its pool of potential astronauts to 705 candidates. Mars One aims to send four people on a one-way trip to the Red Planet every two years, starting in 2024.

Mars One is asking for input from the scientific community in order to source the best ideas from around the world, Arno Wielders, co-founder and chief technical officer of Mars One, said in a statement.

"The ideas that are adopted will not only be used on the lander in 2018, but will quite possibly provide the foundation for the first human colony on Mars," Wielders said.

Mars One is expected to send these payloads aboard the lander that is scheduled to launch in August 2018 and will be built on the same platform used for NASA's 2007 Phoenix mission. Mars One and Lockheed Martin are partnering to develop a mission concept for the lander.

The four demonstration payloads will test technologies needed for the permanent human settlement of Mars. These will include an experiment to collect Martian soil for water production, an experiment to extract water from the soil, a thin-film solar panel for energy generation and a camera system that will interface with a Mars-synchronous communications satellite that will relay live video to Earth, according to Mars One.

Mars One invites university teams from around the world to submit a proposal for a competition for the university payload. These proposals can be science experiments, technology demonstrations or "any other exciting idea," Mars One representatives said. Mars One applicants and followers will help vote to select the winning payload.

"The brightest young minds of our planet are being invited to participate in Mars One's first Mars lander," Bas Lansdorp, co-founder and CEO of Mars One, said in a statement. "We're not only looking for scientific proposals but also for outreach or educational ones."

In addition to the demonstration payloads and the university payload, Mars One plans to fly two payloads purchased by the highest bidder. These could be science or technology experiments, marketing and publicity campaigns or anything else, the organizers said. Previous Mars missions have only sent payloads selected by NASA to the Red Planet, Lansdorp said, whereas Mars One hopes "to open up the opportunity to the entire world," he said.

The nonprofit has released a request for proposals and proposal information package, which include the schedule for selection of the payloads and information about the proposals. Mars One will work closely with Lockheed Martin and other advisers to evaluate and select the payloads that will be flown in 2018, organizers said.

http://news.yahoo.com/mars-one-wants-send-experiments-red-planet-115039740.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Have Questions About Martian Colonies? New 'Mars Exchange' Has Answers
SPACE.com
by Mike Wall, Senior Writer  8 hours ago



Artist's concept of Mars One astronauts and their habitat on the Red Planet. The nonprofit Mars One announced on Aug. 5, 2014 that it's starting a program called "Mars Exchange"



A private Mars colonization effort is about to get more interactive.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four settlers on the Red Planet in 2025, has launched a new project called "Mars Exchange" to help answer questions and spur discussion about the group's ambitious plans.

"Mars Exchange will foster a worldwide dialogue and encourage thought-provoking conversations on the subject of the human permanence on Mars," Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "Mars One advisers, NASA scientists, Mars One team members and even a Nobel Prize winner will contribute."

The first Mars Exchange offering, which was posted online today (Aug. 5), is an interview with Mars One adviser Mason Peck, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University who served as NASA's chief technologist from 2011 to 2013.

In the interview, Peck discusses whether or not a one-way Mars mission of the type envisioned by Mars One — which has no plans to bring the pioneers back to Earth — is "insane." (Peck thinks there are plenty of reasons that might inspire people to go live on Mars permanently.)

Mars One hopes to blast four astronauts toward the Red Planet in 2024 as the vanguard of a permanent colony. Four additional colonists would arrive every two years to augment the settlement.

The organization plans to launch a series of unmanned Mars missions in the coming years to prepare for the arrival of people. The first of these, which is scheduled to lift off in 2018, would demonstrate key technologies required for a human mission and place a communications satellite in Mars orbit, Mars One representatives have said.

Mars One intends to pay for its activities primarily by staging a global media event around the entire colonization process, from astronaut selection through the settlers' time on Mars. Astronaut selection is ongoing; in May, the group announced that it had winnowed its stable of candidate colonists to 705 from an initial pool of more than 200,000 applicants.

http://news.yahoo.com/questions-martian-colonies-mars-exchange-answers-103345531.html

[Buster's Uncle]

One-Way Mars Colony Project Launches Suborbital Spaceflight Raffle
SPACE.com
by Mike Wall, Senior Writer  1 hour ago



Artist's concept of Mars One's anticipated colony on the Red Planet.



A private Mars colonization effort is asking for your help to make its bold plans a reality, and it's dangling a pretty hefty prize as an incentive — a trip to suborbital space.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four astronauts on the Red Planet in 2025, announced today (Sept. 4) that it's raffling off a round-trip suborbital flight aboard XCOR Aerospace's Lynx rocket plane.

To enter the drawing, people can buy Mars One gear or make a donation to the organization. The money raised through the effort, which is called "Ticket to Rise," will help fund a mock Mars mission here on Earth in 2015 and a robotic demonstration mission to the Red Planet in 2018, Mars One representatives said.

"This campaign fits well into our strategy of building awareness and momentum for space travel," Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "Most importantly, it gives our passionate community a free chance to win a space flight and spread the word to others about our mission to the Red Planet."

Ticket to Rise is a collaboration involving Mars One, the online tech magazine Motherboard and the Urgency Network, which organizes fundraising campaigns. To learn more about the project, visit https://www.urgencynetwork.com/marsone.

Mars One wants to set up a permanent colony on Mars. If all goes according to plan, the first four settlers who touch down in 2025 will be joined every two years by additional pioneers, gradually building up a human presence on the Red Planet. There are no plans at the moment to bring any of these people home to Earth.

Mars One plans to pay for most of its activities by staging a global media event around the colonization process, from astronaut selection to the settlers' time on Mars. The selection process has already begun; the organization has whittled its stable of astronaut candidates down to 705 from an initial pool of more than 200,000 applicants.

XCOR's one-passenger Lynx vehicle is designed to take people and scientific experiments to suborbital space and back again, much like Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceliner. A ticket aboard Lynx currently sells for $95,000, while you'll have to plunk down $250,000 to ride SpaceShipTwo.

http://news.yahoo.com/one-way-mars-colony-project-launches-suborbital-spaceflight-162624856.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Expected Fatality Rate for That Mars Reality Show: 100 Percent
The Atlantic
By Tim Fernholz  1 hour ago



Mars One, an organization based in the Netherlands, has been recruiting amateur astronauts to send on a one-way, televised trip to Mars, with the hopes of building a colony there. The organization says that the technology to do this exists, or will be ready by the time of its expected 2022 launch date.

Not so fast, says a group of strategic engineering graduate students at MIT. A simulation of the Mars One plan shared with the public at the recent International Astronautical Congress reveals the colonization project will likely end in disaster unless expensive changes are made.
 
Mars One plans on sending crews of four every two years to the Red Planet, where they will live inside space capsules and inflatable habitats, wringing water from the Martian soil and growing much of their own food. The researchers took into account the various factors necessary for survival—maintaining a breathable atmosphere, avoiding starvation and dehydration, preventing fire and depressurization—to see what the colony would need.

It takes 68 days for the first crew member to die.*

That projected fatality is the result of suffocation, space-style: The researchers found that growing plants would increase the amount of oxygen in the air to the point where it would need to be vented outside of the habitat to avoid increasing the pressure within the life support unit.





But there isn’t technology yet to vent oxygen separately from nitrogen, and indiscriminate venting would quickly cause the colonists to run out of the nitrogen used to maintain pressure, creating a situation where there will not be enough air pressure for crew members to breathe, but enough oxygen in the habitat to create serious fire danger.

And did I mention that humidity in the capsule will hover around 100 percent, thanks to the agricultural efforts?

These failures sent the researchers back to the drawing board, considering options that would avoid this problem by bringing all of the food needed for the colonists or growing it in a completely separate habitat. Both of these options are more feasible, but require far larger shipments of supplies than Mars One’s organizers have planned.

Ironically, it’s more efficient to simply bring food to Mars than attempt to grow it, since the additional infrastructure for the plants will require far more replacement parts. Ultimately, supporting the first crew of four on Mars will require about 15 launches of a heavy rocket like SpaceX’s forthcoming Falcon Heavy, costing about $4.5 billion on their own.

Given that Mars One’s projected budget for the first crew—including launches, years of training, supplies, specially built spacecraft and habitats, ground control, communications technology, and a Martian rover—is $6 billion, they’d better start thinking up new fundraising tactics, or hope the costs of space access drop dramatically in the next eight years.


* Bas Lansdorp, CEO and co-founder of Mars One, disputes this analysis, writing to say that “lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions.” Lansdorp believes that adapting medical oxygen concentrators will address atmosphere control issues and that the MIT researchers over-estimate the weight of their components, but was unable to share any other details about his Mars plan.

http://news.yahoo.com/expected-fatality-rate-mars-reality-145323641.html

[Buster's Uncle]

The reason Mars One colonists could die will surprise you
Humans could begin moving to Mars as soon as 2024 as part of an ambitious Dutch reality-TV/space-exploration project, but a few MIT students say it might not be so simple.
CNET
by  Eric Mack @ericcmack /October 9, 2014 3:52 PM PDT



Mars One hopes to make this reality in about a decade.  Mars One



There's a battle of the brains under way online about just how long the first human colonists to set up a new home on Mars will last on the Red Planet. A group of MIT students have challenged the viability of Mars One, a Dutch nonprofit's plan to set up a permanent colony on Mars with hearty volunteer astronauts who get a one-way ticket to both the fourth planet from the sun and history.

While those who sign up and are selected for Mars One's mission fully understand they'll be living out the rest of their days on Mars, presumably they'll be hoping that those days will number into the thousands. However, the MIT students' analysis (PDF) by Sydney Do, Koki Ho, Samuel Schreiner, Andrew Owens and Olivier de Weck estimates that the first fatality on Mars will come at around day 68 of the mission.

"This would be a result of suffocation from too low an oxygen partial pressure within the environment," the paper reads. Titled "An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan," it was presented at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto earlier this month.

The problem, according to the study, is basically that growing a bunch of crops inside the same structure as living quarters -- as the mission design calls for -- will raise the oxygen in the air to an unsafe level, requiring that extra O2 to be vented outside. However, the MIT students claim that since technology is not available that could exclusively vent oxygen while holding on to the needed levels of nitrogen to ensure enough air pressure for the crew to actually breathe, things start to get really uncomfortable after the imported nitrogen tanks run out on day 66.

Actually, things would already be uncomfortable before lack of oxygen becomes an issue, thanks to the fact that living in a greenhouse would raise humidity levels in the structure to 100 percent, according to the paper.

The MIT paper takes some liberties here, though, by using an area for crop growth that is four times larger than what is included in the actual mission plan. They rationalize this change in their modeling by making the case that because "the crop selection will significantly influence the well-being of the crew for the entirety of their lives after reaching Mars, we opt for crop variety over minimizing growth area."

Mars One CEO Bas Landorp responded to the student paper here, saying "There are many problems between today and landing humans on Mars, but oxygen removal is certainly not one of them."

Landorp explains that the technology used in oxygen concentrators commonly found in hospitals and elsewhere can remove oxygen from the atmosphere via a process called "pressure swing adsorption." He says Mars One plans to leave oxygen levels in the habitat at 20 percent, which is comparable to levels seen at high altitude in places like Quito, Ecuador, on Earth.

The MIT paper is also critical of other aspects of the mission, claiming that the number of launches required to get everything staged and set up for the colonists is overly optimistic.

The students say that they based their conclusions on the best available information and will update their findings when more information becomes available. We'll see if that happens now that the existence of oxygen concentrators is apparently on the table. I'm sure the potential future crew members would appreciate an update just as much as the rest of us.

http://www.cnet.com/news/why-mars-one-colonists-could-die-sooner-than-expected/#ftag=YHF65cbda0

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I call bull on them dying because of too much oxygen.  That assumes their biosphere works optimally.

[Buster's Uncle]

Humans may only survive 68 days on Mars
AFP
By Fabienne Faur  59 minutes ago



A general view of Mars, captured by Mastcam:Left onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on January 27, 2013 (AFP Photo/)



Washington (AFP) - Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission -- an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the Endeavor.

But conditions on Mars -- and the limits of human technology -- could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

"The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission," according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce "unsafe" amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

"Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight," the study concluded.

Shipping in replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

"The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running," he told Popular Science magazine.

But he claimed the researchers used incomplete data, adding that technology for Mars colonization was nearly ready.

"While oxygen removal has never been done in space, I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars," Lansdorp told AFP.

"Of course, the actual apparatus that we will take to Mars still needs to be designed and tested extensively, but the technology is already there."

Many people have voiced doubts about the mission, though the project has won support from Gerard 't Hooft, the Dutch 1999 Nobel Physics prize winner.

The Red Planet lies at least 55 million kilometers (34 million miles) from Earth and it would take a minimum of seven months to get there.

Last June, the entertainment company Endemol, a major reality television producer, agreed to film the participants as they prepared for the move to Mars.

http://news.yahoo.com/humans-may-only-survive-68-days-mars-220955518.html

[Geo]

Endemol... quite a familiar name in the lowlands media industry.

[Buster's Uncle]

MIT Researchers Destroyed This Plan To Send Humans To Mars
Business Insider
By Dina Spector  October 15, 2014 11:20 AM



Mars One An artist's rendering of a Mars Lander, which will transport the first settlers to the Martian surface.



A highly publicized plan to send the first humans to Mars within the next decade is riddled with problems and probably will not get off the ground anytime soon, according to a new report from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Mars One program, developed by the Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, strives to put a four-person crew on Mars by 2025 using "existing and available technology." The group at MIT, on the hand, has identified many technological advances that will need to be met to make the one-way trip a reality and enable a crew to survive on Mars for a reasonable amount of time.

"While this program has been received with great fanfare, very little has been published in the technical literature on this mission architecture," the report said.

The team used mathematical models to evaluate the feasibility of the trip if living units with systems that produce water, oxygen, and nitrogen were deployed to the Martian surface ahead of time, as the Mars One plan suggests.

Using those variables, many simulations found that the trip would be a failure. For example, if the crew requires more food than what would be available in the food store, then the crew would die of starvation before it could grow new food on the surface of Mars. 



MIT


The image to the right shows the layout of the habitat unit and the location of different technologies used for one simulation as part of the MIT analysis.

The researchers pointed out countless challenges in their 35-page report. Notably, food that comes from crops grown on the Martian surface would produce "unsafe oxygen levels" and would require a yet-to-be-developed oxygen removal system, the authors write.

Unofficial sources have also said that the Mars One habitat will be based on a modified version of SpaceX's Dragon module, although the private transport company has not made any mention of this plan.

The researchers found that sending up initial supplies for the first Mars crew would require 15 Falcon Heavy rockets, compared to Mars One's modest estimate of just six.

“We’re not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible,” MIT professor Oliver de Weck said. “But we do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made. We’re pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path.”

http://news.yahoo.com/mit-researchers-absolutely-destroyed-plan-152004567.html