Mars One - Human settlement of Mars in 2023

[Green1]

Forget surviving on the surface, my money is on that it will not even make it off the ground.

Though they may make a bit of change locking drama llamas up in some sort of experiment/training and showing people this on TV. It still will not be enough to land the kind of infrastructure they show on those pretty pictures. Consider for a second Mars Science Laboratory. That thing is the size of a golf cart. MSL had to use groundbreaking techniques like sky cranes. While it does use nuclear fuel which drives up the cost, even that project had over runs and cost 650+ M. All those pods, life support, etc could go into Billions, not Millions. No TV show in history except maybe multiple American Football Superbowls produce that kind of cash.

[Geo]

Maybe if they launch from the Indian spaceport...

[Buster's Uncle]

That's been my objection from the beginning - no way is a reality show going to make the many billions it'll take.  So how are they going to pay?

[Buster's Uncle]

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Explains The Big Problem With The Mars One Mission
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=13997.msg63328#msg63328

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Explains The Big Problem With The Mars One Mission
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig  26 minutes ago



Kai Staats



If you haven't heard, there's a plan to start up a colony of humans living on Mars in the near future.

If the next decade goes as planned, the not-for-profit organization, Mars One, will launch a manned mission to Mars that will land the first human colony on the red planet in 2025.

Here's the catch: Those who leave Earth for the 7-month-long ride in space will never return.

The four-member crew will learn to call Mars — a freezing, barren, lifeless planet — home. Forever.

That may sound great to the tens of thousands of people who applied, but Mars One is going about their grandiose plans all wrong according to retired Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield.

Right now, Mars One is focused more on raising funds and selecting crew members than developing the technology needed for the trip. And the technology, Hadfield told Elmo Keep, writing in Medium, is the most basic starting point for any space mission.

"There's a great, I don't know, self-defeating optimism in the way that this project has been set up," Hadfield told Keep. "I fear that it's going to be a little disillusioning for people, because it's presented as if for sure it's going to happen."



Flickr/Benjamin


So far, the company claims they've had more than 200,000 people apply, and are about to start interviews with 663 final candidates. Mars One says that they will gather the majority of money for the trip through crowd funding from a global reality television event.

The company anticipates that the trip to Mars will cost approximately $6 billion (that's shockingly low compared to NASA estimates for a two-way trip to Mars and back costing roughly $100 billion.)

Although Mars One has visions of partnering with companies like SpaceX to procure the proper technology, so far its only contract is with Paragon Space Development Corporation to study initial life support systems.

Hadfield isn't the only one doubting this project. Doubters at MIT have calculated that "living on Mars" will last only about 68 days before the colonists die.

In particular, Hadfield said, if you don't have the specifications of the spacecraft, you can't begin to select the people who will live and work in it.

"I want to see the technical specifications of the vehicle that is orbiting Earth," Hadfield said. "I want to know: How does a space suit on Mars work? Show me how it is pressurized, and how it is cooled. What's the glove design?"



This image, captured Feb. 1, 2014, shows a colorized view of Earth from the moon-based perspective of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University


What's more, Mars should not even be a target for colonization at this point, according to Hadfield. Our sites should be set on a place much closer.

"We absolutely need to do it on the moon for a few generations," Hadfield told Keep.

On average, the moon is about 600 times closer to Earth than Mars. That means if something goes wrong with a colony, we can dispatch help from Earth that will reach the Moon in a matter of hours instead of months. Developing a working moon colony would be an important first step to living on Mars.



NASA Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan of Apollo 17 tests the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the moon.


Here's a short list of what Hadfield told Keep we need to know before living on Mars:
How do you completely recycle your water?
How do you completely recycle your oxygen system?
How do you protect yourselves from radiation?
How do you not go crazy?
How do you set up the politics of the place and the command structure, so that when we get it wrong we won't all die?

While the Mars One desire to get people excited about space travel again is noble — it has been more than 42 years since we last landed a human on anything in space besides the International Space Station. There's a right way and a wrong way t o go about landing people on other satellites throughout the solar system.

"It's not a race, it's not an entertainment event. We didn't explore the world to entertain other people. We did it as a natural extension of human curiosity and matching capability," Hadfield told Keep. "And that's what will continue to drive us."


http://news.yahoo.com/astronaut-chris-hadfield-explains-big-192957560.html

[Geo]

Let 'm go!

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't think he's exactly volunteering.

[Buster's Uncle]

Private Mars Colony Project Wants Help Choosing 2018 Lander Experiments
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=14075.msg63581#msg63581

[Buster's Uncle]

Private Mars One Colony Project Cuts Applicant Pool to 100 Volunteers

[Geo]

76 more to go (not to Mars), spares excluded...

[Rusty Edge]

I don't think the mission will happen, or work if it does.

To address a couple of questions, I think that the only way to protect themselves from radiation long term is underground. Otherwise, shielding amounts to a lot of dead weight.

As for maintaining sanity, I think the answer is similar to that for Alaska/Yukon during the long, dark, winter. The people most likely to go crazy are those without anything to do.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, I don't think there's many people at all who rate the chances of this working very highly...

But wouldn't it be neat if it did anyway?

[Rusty Edge]

Yes. It would be neat. I'm actually hoping/expecting that they'll solve some of the problems of space colonization in the planning and preparation process. People that think they're betting their lives, or staking their hopes on this might be particularly motivated.

[Buster's Uncle]

I CAN easily believe that they might manage to do some useful basic research.  -Not the way I'd bet, but a lot more likely than colonizing.

[Rusty Edge]

They could easily, well, it wouldn't be easy, but they could very possibly test closed water and oxygen recycling systems while living in them.

Surely there's someplace they could use for experiments. Antartica? the Arctic circle? On a mountain where it's both cold, and the air is thin? Somewhere to test the people and systems while buried in soil or snow. Somewhere that they can come out of in the event of failure, or if the food supply is exhausted, etc.

What does everybody else think?

[Geo]

Looks like there's one Belgian candidate left. See his profiĺe.