
Mars One Project: “Humans Will Live On Mars In 2023″ - thematt
http://techli.com/2012/07/mars-one-project/
======
akavi
_Living there [Mars] is comparable to getting by on Antarctica, and provides
similar challenges._

That right there is complete, unadulterated bullshit. The cost of getting a
pound of supplies to Antarctica is several orders of magnitude cheaper than
getting a pound of supplies even as far as orbit, let alone Mars. And
Antarctica is a much less hostile environment (breathable atmosphere, for
one).

That line alone tells me this isn't remotely a well-thought-out, plausible
venture.

~~~
aperiodic
The logistics of supplies and rescue are a lot easier, sure, but the two
environments have more in common with each other than the rest of the surface
of this planet. You already need to live in artificial structures that can
take a pounding, grow your own food with little from the environment but
sunlight and some raw materials, and you can't survive outside for very long
without ample protection. I mean, for a training environment, where else would
you go?

Also, if you look at the context of the quote, you can see that they're making
an analogy:

    
    
      Living there [Mars] is comparable to getting by on Antarctica, and provides 
      similar challenges. However, the South Pole now has a number of very advanced,
      large research stations that boast a great deal of modern facilities that provide 
      a good quality of life. These looked very different 50 years ago. The Mars 
      settlement will develop in the same way.

~~~
blake8086
I see a lot of differences:

* Internal combustion engines work in Antarctica.

* The atmosphere is breathable.

* The atmosphere is livable if heated first.

* The gravity is the same as Earth.

* (I'm guessing) more sunlight falls on a given area of Antarctica per year than Mars.

* There's no communication delay with Earth.

* Earth-orbit communications satellites are reachable from Antarctica.

* The ground is covered in water, if you heat it first (I don't know how useful this is, but it's probably more useful than Mars soil)

and finally:

You can come home from Antarctica.

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vibrunazo
> The crew is actually going to stay and live on Mars, with the intention to
> remain there, for the rest of their lives.

Wait what? Isn't that a really important part of the problem that shouldn't be
just skimmed through as a mere detail on the video? Aren't the ethical issues
that would arise from this, by itself, be enough to make everything else
unviable. Humans live for a long time. What if after 10 years living there,
the show just didn't raise enough money. "Hey crew, you'll just have to
suicide, we won't send anymore food". Just so many huge issues come to mind.
With not many obvious solutions. I would be interested to hear to which
solutions they have, if any.

edit: their incredibly short FAQ answer about ethics doesn't make me anymore
hopeful. They don't touch on any of the obvious hard problems and even dare to
make an absurd analogy with immigrants from Europe to the Americas:

[http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/19-faq-health/231-is-this-ethi...](http://mars-
one.com/en/faq-en/19-faq-health/231-is-this-ethical)

~~~
nradov
Oh please, those clowns aren't actually going to fly anyone to Mars. They
aren't even remotely close to solving the genuinely _hard_ engineering
problems involved. So worrying about ethics is rather premature.

If someone announces his intention to build a time machine I wouldn't get too
worked about the ethical concerns of changing history.

~~~
alanh
You say that with such certainty. I may be thick, but I haven’t seen enough to
be convinced whether or not they know what they are doing and what problems
are solved or unsolved.

How do you know?

~~~
hobin
I think it's a shame you were downvoted, because you seem to be asking an
honest question: is this possible, or not? I've ranted a bit about why this
isn't possible here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4210984>

But, if you want to know exactly why going to Mars is so difficult, and why so
many projects have failed, start here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Probing_dif...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Probing_difficulties)

Or simply do a quick search on the internet for 'Mars difficulties' or 'Mars
curse'.

------
reitzensteinm
Everyone is impressed at how real they're keeping it?

With the risks involved, and the $6 billion price tag (that will surely bloat
out), there would need to be at least $50-60 billion in profit potential for
rational investment.

Seinfeld is the top grossing show in history, at $2.7 billion.

Maybe they're hoping that billionaires with nothing else to spend the money on
will cough up hundreds of millions to sponsor the project, just to get their
name on it.

Either that, or they're not revealing the whole plan.

~~~
jerf
I think it may be the other way around... this _is_ the whole plan. Mission
accomplished, they're in the news.

------
lukifer
I have a hard time seeing any benefit to colonizing Mars without coupling it
with a large-scale attempt at terraforming. If we're going to just put a domed
colony somewhere, the moon makes far more sense.

I'm much more optimistic about putting more robots in space, such as Planetary
Resources is working towards. As it becomes easier and cheaper to extend our
virtual fingers outside our gravity well, we can eventually create places that
are truly habitable for humans, and which sustainably scale.

~~~
seanalltogether
Without magnetic shielding I'm not sure how far large scale terraforming is
going to get us. Any atmosphere we try to build up will just blow off into
space. But I agree, put the dome on the moon.

~~~
specialist
As a life-long of reader "hard" sci-fi, making me a renown expert, IMHO:

How will humans survive the radiation?

How will humans remain mentally healthy?

I don't think we can feasibly become space faring until those challenges, and
probably some others, are addressed.

Edit: Oh, I just had an idea. How do people with Asperger's deal with
isolation, boredom, continuous contact with a handful of other people? Maybe
there's a subgroup of people who are mentally perfectly adapted for space
travel.

~~~
mburns
You read hard sci fi and you don't have answers to these questions?

Q: How will humanity survive the radiation?

A: Build igloos or inhabit caves or just plain dig into the ground. Problem
solved.

Q: How will humans remain mentally healthy?

A: The Internet and social interaction with other colonists. Also, there is a
lot of work to be done growing plants, managing systems, exploring robots,
documenting and cataloging all that we find.

People, today, already live in extreme isolation for extended periods of time
_by choice_.

Those aren't even the hard problems to solve.

~~~
specialist
I'm projecting. As an extrovert, I'd go nuts. So clearly I'm not making the
trip.

I'm more worried about the time in transit.

For sanity, my assumption is that humans will need the ability to easily
increase / decrease metabolism. So that 6 month, year, century trip would seem
like a few days.

For radiation, I think space faring humans will need to be radiation hardened
somehow.

------
Zikes
I would be just as impressed with a project that aimed to establish a similar
colony on the moon, and far less skeptical.

~~~
loceng
Mars can be mined for resources, the moon can't - or at least shouldn't be.

~~~
indiecore
Why shouldn't the moon be mined for resources?

~~~
artursapek
This reminds me of an interview I heard on the radio 6 or 7 years ago with
someone involved in a project to design & build a small set of robots that can
self-replicate using the materials they get from breaking down moon rocks. The
plan was to leave them on the moon for a decade, and bring them all back to
serve as agricultural helpers on Earth. A caller into the station complained
that it would eat up the moon, to which the scientist speaking chuckled and
said it would only take a hair off the surface of the moon given how massive
it is.

I realize this is barely related, just an interesting memory :) I can't
remember who or what company that was, but I'm pretty sure it was a private
one. Does anyone recognize this? I don't think it ever saw any sort of
fruition.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> A caller into the station complained that it would eat up the moon, to which
> the scientist speaking chuckled and said it would only take a hair off the
> surface of the moon given how massive it is.

Well, if each of them would replicate on average into two or more new robots,
then yes, they probably could eat Moon very quickly. Exponential growth is a
pain :).

~~~
geon
Nine women can't make a baby in one month. The robots would still be limited
by the surface area of the moon.

Also, the moon would not disappear. In the end, there would be an entire moon,
made out of robots.

~~~
artursapek
Great thought.

------
TimJRobinson
At first I thought "wow cool, a reality show on mars sounds like an awesome
idea". Then I thought about it further and wondered "What would they actually
do on mars that would make people want to watch?"

Diary Day 662: "Today we explored another crater, the dirt was quite similar
to the last 83 days. John is still with Dianne and I haven't had sex in nearly
2 years. I've read the Harry Potter series 97 times now, maybe I'll make it to
100 by the end of the year."

I can imagine it lasting a few months or maybe even a year, but what happens
after then when viewers stop tuning in?

I guess by then they're hoping they'll have set up a mining expedition or
maybe other tourist flights and can raise money that way.

------
hobin
This project is completely ridiculous. Those people completely underestimate
how _extremely_ difficult it is to even _land_ on Mars. Nearly two-thirds of
all Mars missions have failed in some way, and yet these people are convinced
they can simply put humans on Mars? Right.

You don't have to take my word for it, though. Take a look at what they say at
their own site, and see if it actually makes sense. A few examples:

"In addition to this, the elements needed for a viable living system are
already present on Mars, so we can keep the number of launches down. For
example, the location Mars One has chosen contains water ice in the ground
which can be extracted through heat and used to drink, bathe with, or used to
feed crops, but can also be manipulated to create oxygen. Mars even has
natural sources of nitrogen, another element of the air we breathe."

And we will extract these resources how? We theoretically know how to build
such systems, but that's not the same as actually being able to build them on
Mars. Are they just going to experiment during the project, and if it doesn't
work then "oops, well, I guess you're all going to die"?

But, most ridiculously: "Of course most of the elements we need are not yet
exactly in the form we would like, but crucially: no brand new inventions have
to be conceived, designed, tested and built for the mission to become
reality."

That's like saying we can also build a colony on Venus right now. Or
Mercurius. Or Jupiter. Because we have a theoretical understanding of how to
launch rockets there and how to build space colonies, and of course the
technology to do both these things already exist. What these people fail to
see is not that we don't have a theoretical understanding of how we _might_ do
all this, but that without any practical experiments in several areas AND many
failed tests the chances of this project going perfectly as planned (which
almost never happens to begin with) are VERY slim.

</rant>

~~~
dvoiss
> This project is completely ridiculous. Those people completely underestimate
> how extremely difficult it is to even land on Mars. Nearly two-thirds of all
> Mars missions have failed in some way, and yet these people are convinced
> they can simply put humans on Mars? Right.

Yes I don't think they have a real understanding. The founder of Mars One did
two AMAs (ask me anything) on Reddit a while back [1] where he said "We are
not scientists, we are entrepreneurs" [2]. A choice quote from a user:

> You have no one (I repeat NO ONE) on your team who is experienced or
> competent in anything related to space travel. The one guy on your team who
> you're showcasing has experience in land based telescopes and a small role
> in an experiment that was taken up by NASA... Which is pitiful compared to
> the amount of expertise needed in a lead on a project this ambitious.

If you check out the AMAs you'll see the above comment in action via the
founder's answers to questions. Most of his answers are vague or difficult
questions are just completely ignored.

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ufb42/ama_i_am_fo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ufb42/ama_i_am_founder_of_mars_one_sending_four_people/),
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_mars_one_settling_humans_on_mars/)

[2]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/_/c4yd59u?contex...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/_/c4yd59u?context=1)

------
raufrajar
There was an IAMA on reddit by these guys a while back:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_mars_one_settling_humans_on_mars/)
It certainly didn't help much in getting my hopes high.

~~~
TimJRobinson
Yep, this comment puts it best:
([http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_mars_one_settling_humans_on_mars/c4ydb78))

 _You're advertising that you want to send humans to Mars by 2023 and you have
NO idea how to do that. Your entire company is based on "wouldn't it be cool
to go to Mars?" As a real entrepreneur building real things, this is like the
new influx of business and marketting students (no offense to those that are
in these fields) running around blabbering about these great ideas they have
and all they need is an engineer to make it for them._

------
SoftwareMaven
I don't believe it. Getting to Mars with people is going to be _much_ harder
challenge than the moon was. This[1] was a great episode of Nova (with Neil
Degrasse Tyson) exploring the research NASA has been doing to prepare for a
trip to Mars.

1\. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/space-food.html>

------
rbanffy
A much smarter plan would be to build a settlement on the Moon, build
factories which build habitats, tools and mining equipment (to extract water,
air, maybe food and fuel from either the Moon or Mars) and send a couple of
those to Mars from the Moon, using a electromagnetic launch system before
sending any humans. One could even remotely control the lunar equipment from
Earth before risking astronauts there.

The idea of a one-way mission is terrible.

------
JumpCrisscross
To what degree have they secured even the initial $6 billion?

~~~
bjornsing
As a startup founder I often ask myself the very same question: yea, to what
degree have I secured _even_ the initial $6 _billion_. :)

------
nell
I can't stop thinking why? Why do we want to go and live in Mars? Developing
the capabilities to go there is one thing. But living there?

I mean we could use it as a prison. Ship prisoners off to space ;)

------
mtrn
Ah, good reminder to reread Philip K. Dick's,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Time-Slip>.

------
zxtang
They plan to launch food supplies to Mars in 2016, 7 years before sending the
astronauts and 2 years before they've even scouted out where to establish a
settlement.

I don't understand why they would send the supplies there so early. Can anyone
explain this timeline to me?

~~~
rbanffy
It's smart to launch supplies in low-energy orbits so as to increase the mass
you can get to Mars for the same fuel budget. Humans have to transit quickly
between the planets, but supplies can handle a much longer trip on a much less
comfortable spacecraft and, to be there for the humans, they'll have to launch
much earlier.

And yes, no sane human being would consider launching to Mars before a return
vehicle is already settled at the destination and ready to take off. The
return vehicle and its backup. And the habitats, supplies and everything else.

------
Xcelerate
The way I see it, there's three outcomes to a goal like this:

1\. Humans never go to Mars

2\. Humans eventually decide it's interesting enough to go to Mars out of
curiosity and find a way to get there

3\. Earth looks doomed, but there's a slim shot at saving humanity by sending
some people to Mars

I'm kind of disappointed there isn't more interest in something like this. Let
me ask you all something. If someone in 1960 told someone else "I bet we'll
have a man on the moon before the decade is over", what do you think the
reaction would be?

It's not a lack of capability that's keeping us from getting to Mars; it's
that people just don't care enough.

------
ForrestN
Are there any experts who can comment (without bias) about the validity of
these claims? It's quite hard to tell just from this whether or not this is a
joke, or whether it's an exciting, plausible initiative.

~~~
macspoofing
<http://mars-one.com/en/about-mars-one/team>

That's all you need to know about the feasibility of these claims.

~~~
volkk
Wow. A mediocre physicist, some pointless graphics designer, a marketer and an
"entrepreneur." This is never happening

------
aidenn0
$6B is going to be hard to recoup; American Idol only took 8 seasons to reach
that mark, and that's probably the most successful reality show so far.

------
johnchristopher
Well.. there was a show about a reality tv show with people aboard a spaceship
set to be the first to venture outside of our star system.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28TV_series%29>

Too bad only the pilot was ever aired (to my knowledge).

------
sabalaba
Here's a good idea, why not "go through" with the project, then fake the
entire media spectacle.

You could build up the exact same media hype and have less costs! Good thing
they have a team member who has "...worked for over 20 years in the graphics
industry".

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bocalogic
I doubt it. But I think it would be possible to be living on the moon in that
time frame. Plus, we could be shuttling all of our garbage into space and
mining the moon. Space 2029 Redo.

------
joaorj
i don't get it why they try to make this look like something that can be done
as they say.

it's a joke. we don't know what are the effects of spending one day on mars
let alone be there for the rest of the astronauts life. and we'll just make it
a $6 billion dollar reality show out of it... oh and the astronauts, will
learn how to work on mars. they better do because with 6 billions budget to
get there and provide them with life support for the rest of their lives is
not gonna be easy.

------
adventureful
People tend to over-estimate change in the short term and under-estimate it in
the long term.

They're going to miss by 20 to 30 years, at least.

