Mars One

[VCrakeV]

What's your opinion on the project? Do you believe that there is merit in the pursuit to colonize Mars? Should people be doing this? Why or why not? To a lot of people, it seems like an obvious step forward for mankind. But what are the benefits? What are we getting out of our effort put into Mars?

http://www.mars-one.com/

[Creative Destruction]

What are the credentials of the "Mars 100"? If this "mission" is loaded with people who have no clue what they're doing, then I am envisioning huge liability lawsuits. Also, the only "Science & Education" partner they have is an "entrepreneurial university." They're planning on using Space X, who can't even get a goddamned rocket off the ground and are experimenting with technology that NASA was using in the 60s. And it appears that the not-for-profit is a controlling stakeholder in a reality TV production company. I'm sure that's going to play into this somehow. And $6 billion only to transport people to Mars and then sustain them for the rest of their lives? The technology needed just to get to a clear concept about how this will all work will far surpass $6 billion easily.

What a fucking joke.

[BIXX]

I would totally watch a reality TV show where people were being sent to space. It would have no noise and the makers would have to guess why this or that person was crying and try to fill in the words.

It has potential.

[hiac]

I wonder whether you have considered that this mission is part of decline of capitalism.

Capitalists have used every resources on Earth for cars and has stolen money from 99%. Now just before climate crisis, they look for an opportunity for more stealing and looting.

Mars should be explored by scientific means and for humankind. If colonized, only as a non-capitalistic cooperation.

Stars, solar system are like second chance for humankind, we should not let spoil them with capitalists.

[Red Commissar]

Well, if it's any consolation the group behind Mars One doesn't really seem to be part of a capitalist cabal to pursue this. I don't mean this as a defense of them but rather to point out that the organizers of Mars One don't really seem to have a coherent plan or resources in place to do what they say they are going to do.

To me, Mars One smacks less of corporations looking to space so much as it reminds me of cults like Heaven's Gate (sans the suicide of course), promising people a way into space. In this case, by crowdfunding it like they would a video game, movie, or some gadget.

Recently there've been two pretty strong critiques of Mars One put out which takes the position of the whole program being at best promising far more than they can deliver, and at worst a scam.

https://medium.com/matter/all-dressed-up-for-mars-and-nowhere-to-go-7e76df527ca0



This makes Mars One sound like some kind of intergalactic Uber. If checks and balances are too expensive, just do away with them in private enterprise. If people might die in the course of your mission, just have them sign a waiver. Neither NASA nor the European Space Agency nor the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency nor any government body can deliberately allow its citizens to die in space, and they certainly can’t send them one-way with no way to retrieve them.

...

“I really counsel every single one of the people who is interested in Mars One, whenever they ask me about it, to start asking the hard questions now. I want to see the technical specifications of the vehicle that is orbiting Earth. 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? None of that stuff can be bought off the rack. It does not exist. You can’t just go to SpaceMart and buy those things.” [quoting Astronaut Chris Hadfield]

...

His professional skepticism was proven well founded when, at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto this fall, four MIT strategic engineering grad students presented a 35-page paper to independently assess the technical feasibility of Mars One’s current plan. The students concluded that (among many, many other concerns) the oxygen required to grow crops would quickly rise to deadly levels producing almost 100% humidity, requiring venting via as yet non-existent technology that would separate nitrogen and oxygen; the habitat would soon become a serious fire hazard and the colonists would likely asphyxiate as a result.

The first fatality would occur 68 days after landing.

https://medium.com/matter/mars-one-insider-quits-dangerously-flawed-project-2dfef95217d3


“My nightmare about it is that people continue to support it and give it money and attention, and it then gets to the point where it inevitably falls on its face,” said Roche. If, as a result, “people lose faith in NASA and possibly even in scientists, then that’s the polar opposite of what I’m about. If I was somehow linked to something that could do damage to the public perception of science, that is my nightmare scenario.”

The first is a bit long, but both articles are worth reading if you want an exhaustive exploration of its problems. Among other things, it points out like Rednoise mentioned that it is intending to use the SpaceX rocket which has run into problems, and it currently has no one to finance its reality show which would somehow fund the cost of the program.

[ckaihatsu]

This makes Mars One sound like some kind of intergalactic Uber.


Is there an app for that?


-- Or --


Ehhhh, not much going on around Earth, anyway, so what the hey.

[ckaihatsu]

As revolutionaries we have a duty to make it the *red* planet...!


x D

[Q]

Mars One Finalist Announces That It's All A Scam (http://www.iflscience.com/space/whats-going-mars-one).

[ckaihatsu]

Mars One Finalist Announces That It's All A Scam (http://www.iflscience.com/space/whats-going-mars-one).


Fuck it, then. Next stop: Venus!


x D

[Rafiq]

I wonder whether you have considered that this mission is part of decline of capitalism.

Capitalists have used every resources on Earth for cars and has stolen money from 99%. Now just before climate crisis, they look for an opportunity for more stealing and looting.

Mars should be explored by scientific means and for humankind. If colonized, only as a non-capitalistic cooperation.

Stars, solar system are like second chance for humankind, we should not let spoil them with capitalists.

Space exploration is impossible within the framework of capitalism. Neil Degrasse Tyson even admitted that the private sector will NEVER spearhead space exploration, merely as a result of the investment and take away risks. He quite correctly stated that this task could only be spear-headed by the state, a trans economic, self conscious entity with large scale coordination and so on. And this will never happen either, being that the cold war is over and the state's of today don't have the time or intuition to devoid so much energy and resources.

One is tempted to argue that space exploration was truly spear-headed by Bolshevik cosmism being that the Soviet Union was the first state to ever sponsor a space exploration society, and make at least a strong rhetorical initiative to travel to space. And let's be quite honest, following some grand mythical revolution, after a long time there is simply no choice: Space is the only opening for the expression of human irrationality left.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Hasn't this turned out to be a con job or something? Freedom ship 3.0. That being said I would watch a reality show that documented an unqualified group of colonists as they slowly descend into space madness and turn against one another. Or where they get murdered by a malfunctioning mars rover or something

[BIXX]

Put all of them on mars with one serial killer, out of any nations jurisdiction.

[BIXX]

Hence; Mars-ONE

[Q]

Put all of them on mars with one serial killer, out of any nations jurisdiction.


Hence; Mars-ONE
Plot twist: They're all convicted serial killers, but they have no idea about each other.

[VCrakeV]

I love how everyone is taking this. I never had attributed Mars One with much credibility, and it seems like it was with good reason. Well, at the very least, it'll be a nice conversational topic once it lands on its face (or, by some miracle, succeeds).

[ckaihatsu]

I love how everyone is taking this. I never had attributed Mars One with much credibility, and it seems like it was with good reason. Well, at the very least, it'll be a nice conversational topic once it lands on its face (or, by some miracle, succeeds).


I'm finding it to be a benchmark of sorts for how large the private sector has gotten -- decades ago this would have been unthinkable for private concerns to do, especially since geopolitics back then was much more about national identity (space-race) than it is today.