Mars One, a Dutch nonprofit organization aiming to land the first humans on Mars and establish a space colony by 2025, appears to have run into trouble. Astrophysicist Joseph Roche, one of the 100 shortlisted candidates, was excited about the project until recently. However, his disposition has soured. At best, things are not quite what they appear to be, according to Roche. He pointed to an assessment of the Mars One mission that concludes, in essence, that the project is not feasible within its established parameters.
My attitude towards Mars One has always been, "I'll believe it when I see it." Personally I think one billion is an extremely low ball estimate of what such a project would actually cost - I would expect the real costs to be multiples of that number. And there is another issue no one seems to be discussing, and that would be the legality of an extremely dangerous one way mission from a jurisdiction such as the United States.
Having said that, I think the Mars One "project" has already been worthwhile, in that it has sparked an honest and open discussion of what the real costs of attempting to "colonize" another planet would be, both in dollars and in human terms. Not to mention an assessment of the technology required to successfully execute such a mission.
But I'll put it on record, I'm 49 years old, and I don't expect to see a human successfully land, alive, on Mars in my lifetime, let alone live there for an extended period of time, or be returned safely to Earth.
I think the project would generate a revenue stream as it got closer to launch and there after. If interest rates stay near 0 they could borrow against that. It is easy to punch holes in such a vast project. This would actually generate more income. Imagine the viewership (ratings) as things begin to fail and people start dying. It would not constitute a failure of the project as a whole. We would learn a great deal. The next group will do much better because of these efforts. It is an awesome experiment.
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Mars One Could Turn Out to Be Mars Zero
Posted by: Richard Adhikari March 20, 2015 05:00 AMMars One, a Dutch nonprofit organization aiming to land the first humans on Mars and establish a space colony by 2025, appears to have run into trouble. Astrophysicist Joseph Roche, one of the 100 shortlisted candidates, was excited about the project until recently. However, his disposition has soured. At best, things are not quite what they appear to be, according to Roche. He pointed to an assessment of the Mars One mission that concludes, in essence, that the project is not feasible within its established parameters.
Having said that, I think the Mars One "project" has already been worthwhile, in that it has sparked an honest and open discussion of what the real costs of attempting to "colonize" another planet would be, both in dollars and in human terms. Not to mention an assessment of the technology required to successfully execute such a mission.
But I'll put it on record, I'm 49 years old, and I don't expect to see a human successfully land, alive, on Mars in my lifetime, let alone live there for an extended period of time, or be returned safely to Earth.