Mars One, which offered 1-way trips to Mars, declared bankrupt

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/mars-one-bankrupt-1.5014522

by vaughnegut • 7 years ago

284 279 7 years ago

HillRat2• 7 years ago

I, for one, am shocked that these guys couldn’t crowdfund their way to Mars. After all, it only cost NASA (frantically punching numbers into a 4-function desk calculator) $315bn to get to the Moon in current dollars. I mean, that’s only 77x total funds raised on Kickstarter to date. Perhaps they should have added the Kupier Belt as a stretch goal?

tombert• 7 years ago

While I agree with your point on this, just to play devil's advocate I have to point out that a lot has changed since the 1960's. We have designed more efficient rockets, we have much better computer guidance systems, we have much lighter-weight synthetic materials that could save on fuel, etc. Conceivably if we were to go to the Moon today, it would be substantially cheaper.

That said, I did feel like this project was overly ambitious. Even with my previous points, rockets are expensive, and space R&D is pricey.

umeshunni2• 7 years ago

A better comparison is how much it has cost SpaceX to get to where they are (and still at least 3 years left to go for their Mars mission) - $2.5B in equity funding + $10s of billions in revenue over the last 10 years.

stickfigure3• 7 years ago

Conceivably if we were to go to the Moon today, it would be substantially cheaper.

This seems contrary to experience. In constant dollars, a jetliner today is 5-10X the price of a jetliner of the 1960s. Mass transit rail miles are >10X. The solutions may be better, but they don't seem to be cheaper.

Launch costs do seem to have fallen quite a bit in very recent history though. So maybe?

loeg7• 7 years ago

The fundamental Tsiolkovsky rocket equation and delta v required to get to Mars hasn't changed since the 60s. Some technology has improved, but the major difficulty is just lifting enough fuel out of Earth's gravity well to get anywhere.

mevile• 7 years ago

It was a cool idea and I'm glad they tried it. It's easy to mock people going out and trying out something new. It was an interesting concept, even though I'd never want to be part of it. It got a lot of people excited, and hopefully, something else came of it as well besides excitement and the ire of some people on the internet.

throwaway57522• 7 years ago

It was obviously stupid and possibly a scam, and there's limit to how much "at least they tried, risk taking implies some failure" back-slapping one should indulge in.

kumarharsh• 7 years ago

Making wild claims _on the back_ of a cool idea and raising a bunch of money is not trying out something new. It was a scam from the start to the finish. Or if not a scam, atleast a very misguided wishful thinking not at all grounded in reality (of Earthly or Martian variety)

Johnny5558• 7 years ago

If you're counting just the Apollo program, your numbers seem high -- the entire program cost "only" $25B in 1973 dollars, or $106B in 2016 dollars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program

Or maybe up to $200B in today's dollars: "In 2009, NASA looked back at the cost of the Apollo program in its entirety, and arrived at a figure of $170 billion in 2005 dollars (or around $200 billion in today’s money)"

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186600-apollo-11-moon-la...

But each Saturn V launch cost a few billion dollars in today's dollars, so you could deduct ~40B if you only care about making a few launches.

Though still well out of reach of a privately funding company that has no real return on investment (it's not like an asteroid mining mission that could bring back a trillion dollars of minerals).

HillRat2• 7 years ago

True — I simply added up NASA’s budget in constant dollars through the moon landings for maximum effect, but the Apollo program in isolation would have been less. (Still took an estimated 400,000 personnel to pull it off, though!)

To my untutored eye, your $200bn+ doesn’t sound out of the range of likelihood, plus or minus — you’re basically looking at an ISS with a number of novel capabilities, plenty of redundancies, and assurance that the crew won’t end up dead from hard radiation along or after the trip, so assume at least $150bn in engineering+build and another $10-15bn to get 500 tons or so of spaceship into orbit. Add in Martian lander and rover costs, new personal equipment, any novel work on propulsion, power, radiation, and life support ... what were these guys thinking, anyway?

adrianN3• 7 years ago

I agree that the bankruptcy of Mars One comes as a surprise to no one, but a trip to Mars can be had for a lot less money than they Apollo program cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

For example is a proposal that would send men to Mars for about 55 billion dollars over ten years. That even includes a return trip.

harrygeez• 7 years ago

How did I not see this coming

outside1234• 7 years ago

Nobody wanted 1-way trips to Mars? Shocking.

azinman2• 7 years ago

Apparently a good number did! Which baffles me... why would you want that? Sounds like a very odd death trap with no resources, economy, services, entrertainnent, ability to travel, etc etc.

Permagate• 7 years ago

To me, it would be very odd if no one wants that since human vary. Someone out there must be crazy enough to just abandon their life on earth to have a chance to set the first stone of civilization in mars (or on the other extreme, no longer wants to live on earth).

cornellwright2• 7 years ago

While I did not apply, I can see the appeal. In one word: Adventure

hughes• 7 years ago

These people were the mark for this scam, paying thousands to "apply".

ethbro• 7 years ago

I'd do it, if there were a high probability of it actually happening and a >50% chance of not dying.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 7 years ago

I'd do it in a heartbeat, if I'd thought it had a chance in hell of succeeding. Everyone's going to die, why not do it while having the adventure of the millennium?

kazinator• 7 years ago

Why would you want a one-way trip out of a uterus onto this planet called Earth? It's ultimately a death trap. Oh, has resources, economy, services, entertainment and travel: for a privileged minority.

lmm• 7 years ago

Why do people have children? To my mind it's a similar tradeoff: giving up a lot of your freedom, wealth, time, ability to travel... for the sake of a better future not for you but for the generation after you.

HillaryBriss• 7 years ago

I wanted one for someone else. Several people, actually.

starpilot• 7 years ago

Survey says a third of us would do it: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2179922-a-third-of-us-w...

I fucking would. It's the ultimate adventure and I have nothing here on earth.

rawoke083600• 7 years ago

you have a hn account with decent latency ;)

JoeDaDude• 7 years ago

This looked like a con job from the start. I can only hope some creditors get their money back, and that those responsible get punished accordingly.

stupidcar• 7 years ago

Yep, and as often happens when a scam involves science or tech, many journalists helped out by promoting their ridiculous claims without due challenge or skepticism.

neotek• 7 years ago

Gosh, what a surprise. I'm sure this saga will convince the general public of the need to be more sceptical about pie-in-the-sky bullshit in the future, and nobody will ever fall for pseudo-scientific scams again.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm just going to go for a quick jaunt on the Hyperloop.

gftttgggfffddd• 7 years ago

A lot of people who were looking forward to dying in space are going to be disappointed.

jeena2• 7 years ago

But to be honest, it sounds much more exciting to die in space than to die in a hospital.

dennisgorelik• 7 years ago

If your goal is to die while having fun -- there are much cheaper alternatives available right here on Earth.

s_kilk2• 7 years ago

Starvation isn't exciting.

analog31• 7 years ago

It's not a legitimate airline unless it's been bankrupt at least twice. ;-)

blocked_again• 7 years ago

But this is a noairline not an airline.

supermw• 7 years ago

Instead of offering dumb 1-way trips to Mars why not create round trips to the Moon and back? You can see Earth from the surface of the moon, see the lunar lander, drive a lunar rover, bounce around for a bit then hop in your module and head back home and live the rest of your life with a new perspective. More interesting than Mars, and doesn't take months to get there.

sandworm1016• 7 years ago

Not as simple as you would think. Mars has atmosphere for capture braking, for parachute landings. The moon requires lots of powered deltav to get onto the surface from low earth orbit, more so than mars iirc.

ukulele• 7 years ago

Are you suggesting that going to Mars is easier than going to the moon?

mav3rick• 7 years ago

Moon is less fuel and risk.

loeg7• 7 years ago

The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin — per wikipedia, "the atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface averages … about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure."

It is not really sufficient for capture braking / parachute landings with any efficiency or safety.

Also, mars takes more delta v than the moon.

andygates2• 7 years ago

That's almost exactly backwards. For any decent-sized payload there's too much atmosphere to ignore (so you need heat shielding) yet not enough to exploit (so you need heavy rockets), parachutes rip off of big payloads... the skycrane was the least ridiculous device JPL could come up with for their rover.

The Moon is much easier, it's just a rock and some delta-V.

Johnny5558• 7 years ago

That seems like a much harder sell -- telling people they are going to be the first people to colonize another planet is exciting. Sending them on a sightseeing cruise around the moon (without even stopping) seems less interesting since even if the trip is "free" (paid by others), it's going to be risky.

Alterlife• 7 years ago

I had the money and it was relatively safe, I would jump at the opportunity.

I got my son a telescope last year and we have been watching the moon whenever we get a chance. It is another world.

onion2k3• 7 years ago

Mars One wasn't seriously aiming to colonize Mars. It was a glorified suicide mission. That isn't appealing to most people, especially compared to a trip round the moon you'd actually have a good chance of surviving.

gesman• 7 years ago

Fraud

jlebar• 7 years ago

Great podcast about this, although I'm halfway spoiling it by telling you it's about Mars One.

http://loveandradio.org/2014/05/hostile-planet/

m23khan• 7 years ago

just Yesterday I commented on another article here about space colonialization being alchemy of our times and I got downvoted. And Today this...

unnouinceput• 7 years ago

Nah, I wouldn't worry, you can get downvoted today just as easy :P

Johnny5558• 7 years ago

But unlike alchemy, space colonization is actually technologically possible, it's just prohibitively expensive and would likely take global cooperation to make it possible -- which won't happen without some clear extinction threat to Earth and given the response to the threat of global climate change, I'm skeptical that enough people would believe scientists claiming that we're a decade from a life-ending asteroid strike.

stickfigure3• 7 years ago

Alchemy is certainly possible with today's technology, and has been done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals

It's not cost effective, but it is cheaper than space colonization.

sriku• 7 years ago

I'm surprised at the negativity on this on a startup accelerator's site where "a small chance of success" - Gimli style - means game on.

At my org, we've had one of these round 3 candidates give a talk about it and the interview and training process they went through seemed like no joke. It seemed to me that if you were to start a company with the final selectees, it would be hard to fail.

Areading314• 7 years ago

I think there are a lot of people on here who think that "conquering space" is a giant distraction from the many very real problems that exist here on Earth that can actually be solved by self-sustaining businesses.

Pristina2• 7 years ago

but muh space, muh high contrast colorful nebulae, muh railguns

laumars• 7 years ago

I disagree. I think that conquering space makes sense from the perspective of creating a redundant copy of the human race (I say “redundant” rather than “backup” because Mars is too close to Earth to protect it against any sizeable interstellar events).

My issue with Mars One was that it didn’t seem very credible in achieving its goals and that worries me that now people have been burnt by Mars One, they will not take a more credible organisation seriously if/when one comes along.

neatcoder2• 7 years ago

I think such thinking is very short-sighted. Space exploration is necessary. It satisfies human curiosity, a very innate need among humans, one of the reasons why our species has been very successful so far.

That there are real problems that exist here on the Earth somehow does not preclude space exploration. Space exploration and solving problems on the Earth are not mutually exclusive activities. They can both be done in parallel and sometimes one helps the other and vice versa.

Barrin92• 7 years ago

I'm surprised at the negativity on this on a startup accelerator's site where "a small chance of success" - Gimli style - means game on.

I think there are two different ways of interpreting 'a small chance of success'. The risk of a startup failing is generally because uncertainty is very high and competition tends to be fairly strong, not because the idea startups come up with are super outlandish or seem outright impossible.

But trying to crowdfund you to Mars is a little bit like saying "I'm going to build an AGI in my garage in the next 10 years".

And I think when it comes to actually bringing people into space, we need to talk about scientific expertise, health, safety and how much of this is a publicity stunt that, if it ever happened, threatens the health of people. We're far beyond a webapp here

exabrial• 7 years ago

Yet someone got paid and declared mission accomplished. Hilarious unless you were an investor. Maybe the engineers that worked at the company wrote really productive code in a really productive language. And the company offered amenities and benefits that were unlike anything else.

lozenge• 7 years ago

What engineers? AFAICR the team was six marketers... because it was a marketing stunt/scam.

runyor2• 7 years ago

As long as everybody is investing their time, money and health as free choice I think it's a good thing and we should support them.

Of course it's a pipe dream. Of course people will dump sh*tloads of money for no results. Of course people will die if they really start doing stuff like this. But is there really a way to achieve such kind of goal without such sacrifices?

loeg7• 7 years ago

By that logic, we should celebrate Madoff for sacrificing other people's money. I don't think it's unreasonable for society to set limits on the scams and cons businesses are allowed to be based on.

runyor2• 7 years ago

Let's say you are right. Then we should discuss why Mars One is a scam and SpaceX isn't. And just saying "SpaceX has succeeded until now" is not really cutting it. Being a billionaire and probably having quite some parental and silicon valley network to make use of, Musk simply also had much better odds. But this is not something you or I couldn't have guessed when Mars One started. It's quite obvious.

So from what I can see you can't say one is a scam and the other isn't. Both are a gamble and the one succeeded until now while the other hasn't. A scam is, when they didn't even try to do anything. Or when they used the money to buy yachts instead of financing space base science. Is there something like this? If they sold a pipe dream and worked hard to try to make it become reality, imho, it's not enough to call it a scam.

tdons• 7 years ago

The writing has been on the wall for a while now.

Even Gerard 't Hooft, famous physics nobel prize winner and one of the ambassadors of Mars One said the schedule and budget were off by a factor of 10. [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/23/mars-one-pla...

GreenToad5• 7 years ago

Just to go out on a limb here, I am guessing that the "one way" bit put a bit of a kink in their marketing efforts...

bArray• 7 years ago

Much too ambitious, especially with massive organizations (such as NASA) being unable to with much larger budgets and experience. Called it as a non-starter from the get-go. Good thing too, probably would have blown up on the pad and never left earth.

I think they could have got quite a bit of funding from crowd sourcing with lower ambitions, such as having a crowd-sourced satellite to go to Mars to conduct research. They could pay some external company to do a lot of the engineering and just act as a middle-man.

Like the cube sats, offer to take other people's research/commercial projects all the way to Mars and you have yourself a semi-viable investment project. For the backers, allow them time on the satellite, name stuff, something on the satellite that stores something personal to them (perhaps digitally and transmitting it back to earth with a massive time delay) - I think people would be interested.

duchenne2• 7 years ago

I find it amazing that, even though Mars One looked so sketchy since the beginning, still 200,000 people applied for their program. That means that still many people dream about exploring space. If a solid project was launched, probably hundreds of millions of people would apply to travel and settle down on another planet. It makes me very hopeful.

Until a few years ago, medias were always very negative and described space exploration as a waste of money. But, it is getting a bit better. This may be thanks to Space X, the new race to the Moon (China), the landings on a comet (Europe) and an asteroid (Japan), the Indian mission on Mars, and so on.

Now, the project of replacing the ISS (end scheduled in 2020) with a permanent base on the Moon sounds more plausible (Moon Village).

manigandham3• 7 years ago

There's a big difference though between wanting to go and actually being capable and qualified.

The first several waves will need to be the absolute best of us to have a chance of establishing a permanent settlement.

antt4• 7 years ago

One only needs to look at the death records for New England in the early period to realize that's not the case. An 90% mortality within a year is no stop for colonization if there is enough political will for it.

Pristina2• 7 years ago

200,000 applying isn't that big a deal since it's not that hard to apply. It doesn't really require any commitment.

bsamuels• 7 years ago

you had to pay like $50 to apply

PurpleRamen• 7 years ago

200.000 started the registration, but only 2800 remainend at the end of the process. Problably because they where not willing to pay the fee of $73 Dollar.

TotempaaltJ• 7 years ago

the ISS (end scheduled in 2020)

It actually looks to be closer to 2030: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#En...

duchenne2• 7 years ago

Thank you for the correction.

2030 would give us more time to prepare an ambitious next step.

tzfld• 7 years ago

Does anyone remember Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars Foundation?

fipple• 7 years ago

My friend "applied," knowing full well it was a scam. He said that he regretted nothing, as it allowed him to fantasize about the journey more concretely. So perhaps it served the same function as pornography.

belorn• 7 years ago

I think it is more similar to lottery than pornography in that it enable people to fantasize about the future.

idlewords• 7 years ago

Shirley Jackson's Lottery.

2019ideas• 7 years ago

My friend "applied," knowing full well it was a scam.

Knew it was a scam and did it anyway?

These are the people that need to have conversations with economists.

5partan2• 7 years ago

You don’t rationalize on hopium.

KnightOfWords• 7 years ago

Well, that's no surprise. Their plan was essentially to hold a televised execution while lacking the budget to build the scaffold.

Here's a technical assessment of the viability of their plan: https://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2014/01/18/ask-etha...

devoply• 7 years ago

Imagine people having some sort of debilitating disease wanting their last moments to be on a trip like this.

detaro• 7 years ago

Except Mars One wasn't interested in not fully healthy people.

tempestn3• 7 years ago

I think calling it a televised execution is quite an oversimplification. Mars One was deeply flawed, but the basic concept of a one way colonization mission to Mars isn't insane. A one-way mission is legitimately simpler from a technical perspective, and there are obviously plenty of people who would be happy to go. If it were done well, with a high probability of survival and prosperity (and really, only in that case), I would be fascinated to watch.

Not to mention, even if the initial mission were one-way, it's entirely possible that return trips could be possible within the lifetimes of the initial colonists. And besides, everyone dies; I can see why someone might choose a life of adventure (and pain, toil, monotony, etc.) on Mars over a life of relative comfort on Earth, even if I wouldn't make the same choice.

walrus013• 7 years ago

I don't really see the logic of "it'll be so much less costly and complicated if we make it a one way mission"

Why?

If we are able to successfully lower the $ per kg cost for cargo to LEO, and from LEO to mars transfer orbit, it will be a moot point. We're going to need something like the most wildly optimistic scenarios for full re-use of the SpaceX BFR, and huge numbers of BFRs or BFR-equivalents flying many missions to make a Mars colony a reality. Doesn't matter whether one-way or not.

Presuming that we have done so, and the spacecraft are fully reusable and the $ to orbit cost is low, what technical problem or economic problem would prevent a few launches from Mars on a return trajectory to Earth? For whoever was part of the initial colony that decided they wanted to return.

Faark• 7 years ago

would be fascinated to watch

I'd expect it to get boring quick, just like watching rocket launches. New exciting images can only happen every so often. You probably want some drama or tension for better ratings. That's a pretty big mismatch of incentives combined with tricky power dynamic. I'd stay away from that unless that reality show is just a small side venture. And no way it could ever significantly finance a mars base in the first place.

r3bl• 7 years ago

Bone loss, changes in bone structure, muscle atrophy, and changes in the inner ear are just some of the suspected negative effect of spending extended periods of time in weaker gravity.

They'd have to spend hours each day working out to counter those effects. Their day would primarily consist of sleep and working out, with a few hours of time for everything else. That doesn't make for a good televised program.

On top of that, a minimum-energy launch window appears every two years and two months (or 780 days), making it way more realistic to send people on two year long missions.

lisper26• 7 years ago

a one way colonization mission to Mars isn't insane

Actually, it pretty much is. There are vast tracts of uninhabited land on earth, notably in the American West. Colonizing those would be vastly easier than colonizing Mars, and yet we don't do it because even that is borderline insane (at the very least, economically irrational). No rational person should take Mars colonization seriously until, at the very minimum, someone puts a colony in the middle of the Nevada desert that manages to sustain itself for a few years with no outside help. No one is doing that because it's both unsexy and stupid. But being sexy doesn't make colonizing Mars any less stupid.

Odenwaelder• 7 years ago

What on Mars are you talking about?

_carl_jung• 7 years ago

I look forward to the Netflix documentary.

tempestn3• 7 years ago

Mars One: The Greatest One-Way Trip to Mars that Never Happened

Asooka• 7 years ago

Personally, I'm waiting for the "put rocket boosters on Mars and fling it into Venus, re-enacting the impact that created the Moon and altering Venus's orbit to be approximately opposite of Earth's (but still safely far away), thus creating Earth-2" mission.

Shengbo• 7 years ago

Based on the AMAs the founder gave on Reddit, it looked like a scam to be honest.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1tw2fy/i_am_bas_lansd...

chriskanan2• 7 years ago

So many comments here are really depressing and lack a sense of adventure and romance. Yes, Mars One did not have a sound plan, but it inspired a certain kind of person who wants a grand adventure with impact. Mars to Stay is a legitimate idea and makes a lot of sense for colonization: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay

The Mars One idea of turning the colonists life into a reality TV show would be the first reality TV show I'd ever want to watch and would make a fantastic documentary.

So, while Mars One was severely flawed, I think the Mars to Stay philosophy makes a lot of sense if we want to colonize Mars.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w

Deestan• 7 years ago

So many comments here are really depressing and lack a sense of adventure and romance.

(Since you are not replying to any specific such posts, I assume you are referring to those who point out that this was expected because Mars One was clearly not viable.)

Adventure and romance are good, and can be communicated through fiction, sky castle thinktanks, forums for interested people, etc. Pretending to actually do it is not necessary.

Lying to people and siphoning money out of crowdfunding can not be excused by "at least they made it sound fun". That's what all fraudsters do - they sell a dream and remove your money.

chriskanan2• 7 years ago

As I pointed out in my comment, Mars One didn't have a sound plan. Like most others following the effort, I thought it was a scam meant to enrich Bas Lansdorp. That they are a scam isn't news: everyone knew this. I'd guess that most of the donors even knew this.

That said, I think the idea of a one-way Mars colonization mission has a lot of merit, as long as there is some chance of survival. "Mars to Stay" as a one-way trip is something that has many proponents, most famously Buzz Aldrin. The one good thing about Mars One is that they got people talking about this proposition and doing a deeper analysis of how it could be achieved.

s_kilk2• 7 years ago

So many comments here are really depressing and lack a sense of adventure and romance.

I have plenty of both, but I just don't find these kinds of crass marketing scams enticing.

oskhan• 7 years ago

It's like Fyre Festival, but in spaaaaace.

kartikkumar• 7 years ago

Bas Lansdorp was one of the supervisors for my BSc graduation group project at TU Delft. I had some interesting interactions with him and a few others affiliated with Mars One back then, before Mars One was on the table.

I think the whole Mars One story will make it into a Hollywood script, because there's been more drama than most good movies I've watched in recent times.

There are thoughts about the project that I'd rather not share publicly, especially since I also know one of the main authors of the MIT study that became the focus of a lot of the critique about the feasibility/viability of the entire project.

Safe to say, Mars exploration is hyper-complex because of complexity in a whole host of dimensions, not just technical/scientific. Mars One exemplifies that.

I'm involved in Mars analog simulations missions through the Austrian Space Forum [1], so I've got a pretty good reading of the complexity that goes into planning & operational excellence.

If I had to sum up the whole Mars One journey in one word, it would be: underestimation.

[1] https://oewf.org

akhilcacharya• 7 years ago

The idea is so absurd I really hope it's a comedy.

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

I don’t know much about this subject so excuse a naive question: why Mars and why not the asteroid belts where I have read that there are raw materials and large amounts of ice? Is it because of negative health effects living in zero gravity and/or problems creating artificial gravity with rotation?

martin-adams• 7 years ago

What would concern me is if they did managed to get people to Mars, then went bankrupt, leaving no new supplies being sent across.

pseingatl• 7 years ago

There can't be a Mars colony without a legal code for Mars. Shanghai in the 1930's is the existing framework. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

See, marslegalcode.org.

tempodox• 7 years ago

Even extraordinarily exorbitant fads finally fade.

pfdietz• 7 years ago

Perhaps the point of this was to build a database of people who are demonstrably gullible, to be targets of future scams.

adrianhon• 7 years ago

I know that for everyone here, it was obvious from the start that Mars One was never going to fly. What really gets my goat is the utter gullibility of the media. Here are a few of the articles from The Guardian:

22 Apr 2013: Life on Mars to become a reality in 2023, Dutch firm claims

19 Jan 2014: Why we want to spend the rest of our lives on Mars

9 Feb 2015: Mars One mission: a one-way trip to the red planet in 2024

17 Feb 2015: Mars One shortlist: the top 10 hopefuls

19 Feb 2015: Why I want to be a passenger on Mars One

30 May 2015: Can Mars One colonise the red planet?

It was always complete bullshit, anyone with a smidge of technical or scientific background said so repeatedly, so why they did write about it so many times? Yes, I know the proximate reasons – Mars One had a good PR agency, The Guardian wants clicks, etc. But The Guardian is meant to be a good, trustworthy news source, and here they were giving credibility to what I can only describe as a scam artist, or at best, a completely deluded entrepreneur.

It should never have gotten as far as it did, and I blame the media for this.

tim333• 7 years ago

In fairness to the Guardian they were skeptical:

"how can you not be suspicious of a bloke who has no rockets or spacesuits but says he’s off to Mars soon"

and it's quite an interesting story.

lisper26• 7 years ago

One indication that no one is even remotely ready to think seriously about colonizing Mars (including Space X): There are vast tracts of uninhabited land on earth, notably in the American West. Colonizing those would be vastly easier than colonizing Mars, and yet no one is even talking about that. A self-sustaining colony in the middle of the Nevada desert that was able to get by with no outside help for a few years would be about 1% as hard as colonizing Mars, and yet no one has done it, and no one AFAIK is planning to do it. This to me is the smoking gun that no one is really taking Mars colonization seriously. Everyone is caught up in the sexiness and glamour and no one wants to get down in the dirt and solve the really hard problems of how humans are actually going to survive when they are totally isolated from civilization for years.

Yes, I know about the HI-SEAS project. That was not isolated nor self-sustaining, and it only lasted 8 months.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/mars-sim...

That's actually not even the sort of thing I'm talking about. Forget simulating Mars. I want to see someone just colonize an uninhabited part of Earth without relying on help from the outside without any other constraints. Until we can do that, Mars is hopeless.

woah• 7 years ago

Ummmm... how do you think that things were hundreds or thousands of years ago?

Retra6• 7 years ago

It's not clear what you're trying to say. All human colonization to date has been dependent upon fertile lands or extensive outside support. If we want to colonize Mars, we should prove we can survive without these things, and since nobody has done that on Earth, why should anybody they think it can be done on another planet?

lisper26• 7 years ago

In the Nevada desert? Pretty much the same as they are today: uninhabited.

kakarot4• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history.

Maybe we could better spend our time working on the things we haven't figured out.

lisper26• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure we've managed to colonize a tract of uninhabited land at least a couple of times throughout history.

Without a connection to existing civilization, and without a source of easily accessible water provided by nature? No, we have never done that.

imgabe4• 7 years ago

Exactly, literally every place that is now inhabited was once an uninhabited tract of land that humans colonized. Humans are very good at living in almost every environment on Earth.

verinus• 7 years ago

OK, but why?

It makes zero sense to go to Mars if we have enough uninhabited land available.

jcranmer• 7 years ago

Restrict the history of colonization to:

1. Those that postdate farming. Because we obviously can't cream off the local wildlife in Mars as there is none.

2. Those that can survive the loss of their motherland. If the goal is to survive the complete loss of Earth, the Martian colony needs to be completely self-sustaining and cannot have any reliance on the Earth-bound umbilical cord.

The list of lands uninhabited as of about 2000 BC essentially amounts to remote islands in the oceans. Polynesian colonization definitely relied on the sustained contact between these remote islands. A lot of the remote Arctic/Antarctic islands were settled largely to facilitate hunting of sea mammals (seals, whales) and wouldn't exist if that trade ceased. Hell, the Norse colony in Greenland collapsed after it was dropped from Viking trading routes... despite lasting for over 400 years before then.

The closest thing I can think to of an example that meets this criteria is the Pitcairn Islands. But while they did clearly last for a decade without outside contact, much less support, they became dependent on outside support within about 50 years. The carrying capacity of Pitcairn Islands is probably smaller than the minimum self-sustaining band size of human beings.

notyourwork• 7 years ago

I think you are missing the bigger premise with colonization of another planet. I agree your challenge would be worth of consideration but the premise is that if earth due to some reason becomes uninhabitable having a colony on another planet gives human population ability to continue on. This is regardless of whether we have colonized every inch of this planet right?

Retra6• 7 years ago

Earth is unlikely to ever become less inhabitable than Mars, even under the most pessimistic scenarios.

yardstick• 7 years ago

I think the original point was that you can practice and fine tune various techniques critical for Mars right here on Earth first. Makes sense to me. Let’s still reach Mars but let’s also make the best use of our resources here so we can minimise the failures over their. Not eliminate, but significantly reduce.

bane2• 7 years ago

There are vast tracts of uninhabited land on earth, notably in the American West. Colonizing those would be vastly easier than colonizing Mars, and yet no one is even talking about that.

I think the principal problem here is that those places aren't on Mars.

lisper26• 7 years ago

Why is that a problem?

flopunctro• 7 years ago

The less-obvious difference between Mars and "anywhere on Earth" is that no amount of environmental (even tectonic) damage done on Earth is going to affect Mars. I'm not arguing that Mars is orders of magnitude harder than Nevada, but it covers the risk of "we fucked Earth".

opencl• 7 years ago

No matter how badly we fuck up Earth with pollution/climate change/nuclear war/etc. it is still going to be a far more habitable place than Mars.

jfengel• 7 years ago

But the risk of "we fucked Earth" to the point where it's harder to colonize than Mars is effectively nonexistent. You could set off every nuclear device at once and it would still be easier to live here than on Mars. Even a dinosaur-killing asteroid would still leave the planet easier to live on than Mars. (Many species did survive last time, even without technology.)

hannob• 7 years ago

I don't think anyone wants to colonize Mars because they're looking for land. They want to colonize Mars because it's super-cool to live on another planet.

If it's feasible or makes sense is of course an entirely different question.

rev_null• 7 years ago

Biosphere 2 was meant as a self-sustaining ecosystem capable of supporting human life. It wasn't entirely successful, but was along the lines of what you described.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

lisper26• 7 years ago

Biosphere was an interesting experiment, but very different from what I had in mind. It relied on a huge up-front engineering effort, orders of magnitude more than what would be realistic on Mars. What I had in mind was a colonization effort in the desert starting with what you could realistically carry on a spacecraft, i.e. a few shipping containers (even that is being pretty generous) and then no outside contact for two years (at a minimum).

makewavesnotwar• 7 years ago

Yeah, I've been making that argument since Musk and Bezos first announced their intentions (though I usually used terraforming Arizona as an example as that state has become one of the largest polluters per capita in the US).

But the argument that guys like Bezos and Musk are clinging to is that Mars presents an opportunity to continue the human race in an event of cataclysmic proportions (like another massive asteroid strike, the Yellowstone caldera erupting at a scale we hadn't anticipated, or global warming making Earth generally uninhabitable).

Being farther away from the Sun, Mars gets much much colder than Earth, but it never gets as warm (max temps are something like 60 - 70 degrees Fahrenheit). So it's substantially different than a place like the Nevada desert.

I don't argue that we shouldn't be trying to terraform Earth first and reduce our reliance on positive feedback loop functions like air conditioning, quite the contrary. And I do believe all the rocket launches involved getting people to Mars would likely accelerate warming here on Earth. But Earth and Mars are vastly different places that are very far apart, and I think that's the argument for colonizing Mars.

Also, you should look into Earthships.

lisper26• 7 years ago

Mars presents an opportunity to continue the human race in an event of cataclysmic proportions (like another massive asteroid strike, the Yellowstone caldera erupting at a scale we hadn't anticipated, or global warming making Earth generally uninhabitable).

Even in a worst-case scenario we're better off here. We have a pretty good idea where all the dinosaur-killer-sized asteroids are and none of them are on a collision course with earth. There is the possibility of a medium-size rock causing some very serious damage to infrastructure, but it's not going to make us go extinct. Likewise for volcanic activity. Even a dinosaur-killer-sized rock is survivable (for the species, not for civilization) by moving underground for a while until the dust settles.

Global warming is an existential threat to civilization, but not to homo sapiens as a species. We may have to go back to being hunter-gatherers in northern latitudes, but again, it's not going to make us go extinct.

Homo sapiens are just damned tough to exterminate.

jfk13• 7 years ago

trying to terraform Earth

Interesting phrase ... isn't Earth "terraformed" already, by definition?

WhompingWindows• 7 years ago

You're not considering the actual, non-hype reasons for colonization of Mars. It's about scientific discovery first and foremost, and the vast majority of "beings" there will be robots in early colonization. Look at what we've sent already: robots for scientific discovery. This pattern will continue for at least a couple decades, the first humans sent there will be technically minded to do maintenance on robots, build up a small base/solar arrays/propellant production. Putting fake bases in the West isn't going to do anything towards understanding Mars, its former ecosystems, and its current potential for harboring life.

If you and everyone else has bought into the hype machine, well that sucks, but real scientists are still focused on robotics on Mars.

cicero• 7 years ago

The article is about Mars One, which was about sending humans to Mars.

lisper26• 7 years ago

I'm not opposed to the scientific exploration of Mars. I'm just saying that we are nowhere near ready to seriously consider colonizing Mars.

short_sells_poo• 7 years ago

Because usually in the past, the big leap was not done by playing it safe, but by ignoring all the naysayers, disbelievers and those without imagination and doggedly doing the impossible only to discover that when push came to shove, solutions were found to previously impossible problems and when enterprising people put their heads together and do not consider failure an option, miracles can and do happen.

Playing it safe can net small incremental improvements, but it won't capture people's imagination and it won't energize the human spirit to reach to the very bottom of our abilities. Playing it safe won't unite a large group of fundamentally egoistic beings for a common cause.

I believe the biggest evolutionary leap that propelled humans to the top of the food chain is the enterprising human spirit, the pioneering drive, the irresistible urge to stick our fingers into the wallsockets of the universe. Sometimes we get shocked, and sometimes it hurts badly, but we strive becase we do not give up. We reach for the stars, and when we find ourselves in dire need because the cold, merciless and deadly vastness of space threatens our survival, we are pushed to find solutions that were deemed unthinkable otherwise. Perhaps the first shot only gets us to the moon, but we'd never reach it just plinking arrows. Early explorers set out into the unknown oceans knowing that they will likely not return. Many faced extreme hardship and regrettably died. But some survived and they wrote history as we know it. They were all ill-prepared, because they didn't even know what to prepare for. But it is their sacrifice that allowed us to discover new continents, to circumnavigate the world and connect pockets of humanity into an ever denser network of modern society.

There was a time when scientists were convinced that humans will not be able to breathe if travelling faster than 40 mph. There was a time when human flight was thought impossible. It took a bunch of people jumping off cliffs and plunging to their death to figure out the details. Those jumps were necessary. Not just for lessons learned ("this is not the way to do it" is a valuable lesson!) but each of those jumps pushed the envelope a bit further. Each pioneer got a bit closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. The light in some tunnels ends up beign a train, but some tunnels end up leading to the bright spark of revolution.

As much as logic dictates otherwise, we need dreamers who are irrational and fearless enough to go into the unkown. Without these dreamers, nobody will push the envelope. Most of them will be considered foolish, stupid and reckless in their time, but our history is built on the shoulders of those who succeeded against all odds.

lisper26• 7 years ago

the irresistible urge to stick our fingers into the wallsockets of the universe

That is a lovely turn of phrase!

lorenzorhoades3• 7 years ago

Do you believe this would be worth it? Do you think our society does not have sufficiently advances technology to start a self sustaining colony in the desert? I think it would be absolutely trivial, and i'm pretty sure someone has already planned this out and decided against spending the money.

lisper26• 7 years ago

Do you believe this would be worth it?

Absolutely.

Do you think our society does not have sufficiently advances technology to start a self sustaining colony in the desert?

I think the jury is very much out on that question.

I think it would be absolutely trivial

I think you underestimate how much humans depend on their connections to civilization.

Even surviving in benign environments (i.e. ones where water is available for free) for long periods of time is non-trivial.

ng-user• 7 years ago

This reminds me of the Fyre documentary.

Mars One, which offered 1-way trips to Mars, declared bankrupt

Related Stories