Dr. Joseph Roche, who is an assistant professor at Trinity College from Ireland, and has a PhD in physics and astrophysics, is on the shortlist for the Mars One project to put a base on Mars by 2025.
He’s now claiming that the whole thing is basically a scam.
Other than this being the most obvious thing in human history for those of us who have always been skeptics, Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp has postponed the entire timetable by two years in response, because of a “lack of investment.”
Technically, this lowers the probability of the mission from 0% to 0% so it’s not really news.
Does anyone have any information that tells me I’m wrong about this?
Keep in mind that the term “scam” isn’t always synonymous with “project doomed to fail”. “Scam” implies “fraud”, and “fraud” requires intent to defraud, which basically would mean that those running the program intend it to fail or that at least they know, or have reason to know, that their project is virtually guaranteed to fail. Whether that’s the case isn’t clear from the article.
[post=17253281]Previous thread on the topic[/post]. If Bas Lansdorp and the people at Mars One don’t realize just how unrealistic their avowed mission proposal is, it is wilfull ignorance at this point.
Realistically, we (humanity) won’t be able to put a crewed mission to Mars inside of 20 years at a cost of no less than several hundred billion dollars, and only that with a directed, near-heroic effort analogous to (but much more extensive than) the Apollo Lunar program. (The minimum cost for a high probability of success mission tends to hover right around US$500B; it could be done somewhat cheaper but only at an unacceptable level of risk, e.g. a probability of success no greater than 95%.)
Nor is there a persuasive reason to rush to send people to Mars. It is not and will not, with any proposed technology, be habitable without regular resupply. The reduced intensity of sunlight and months-long dust storms, the lack of nitrates in soil, and atmosphere that is only just thick enough to complicate entry and descent but not sufficiently dense for lown speed aerodeceleration, all make it highly problematic for any plans for long term habitation. For the cost of a single crewed mission we could scatter hundreds of landers and rovers across the surface and accomplish more in terms of science objectives than any single crewed mission could possibly hope for, and without putting all eggs in one unstable basket…
Although the concept is less sexy to the space enthusiast crowd, it would make far more sense to improve the state of the art of uncrewed exploitation of in-space resources (comets and asteroid) and non-chemical propulsion in order to be able to build a space habitation and transporation infrastructure that could sustain a human presence in solar-orbitating space. At such a point, sending a crewed mission to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, or elsewhere in the solar system (other than the surfaces of Mercury, Venus, and the interiors of the outer planets) would be more of a logistical exercise in planning and resource allocation than a desperate, go-for-broke, flag-planting effort with only a marginal benefit to anyone.
I searched for Mars One as two words and found nothing. Should have searched on my name since I knew I had commented.
The recent flurry of news articles after Roche’s comments seems to have flown by without notice here. I hope that means that people are realizing the speciousness of these plans. I’d believe in a hyperloop first, and I’m on record as a doubter of that. (You might be amused by this.)
One often sees a desperate attempt to extract more funding out of the believers just before a delusional enterprise flies up its own butt. My question really is whether this is the last burst before extinction, the plan all along, or something else I haven’t thought of.
I’ve seen a few articles over the last year or so, discussing this phenomenon. There are people, married, with wives and children and steady jobs and otherwise well-established in the Earthly community, who are apparently willing to leave all that behind and go run off to live on Mars.
That attitude alone should disqualify them from eligibility for this mission.
When I first read the news stories about this, the phrase that leapt out of the page for me was “reality TV show”. I know nothing of the promoters of this scheme, so I’m in no position to say whether they are chancers, dreamers, serious or fraudsters: but it’s obvious that’s the only part of their plan that offers them a financial return, and to make such a show you don’t actually need the victims/participants to do anything in particular beyond make idiots of themselves.
I applied for and was selected to go to McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
I was single, and had no kids or ex. I had been recently laid off of a high tech computer job and was involved with Civil Air Patrol. Mountain search and rescue. I also had a lot of construction experience. Building houses in Colorado in winter. Really, I was a perfect candidate.
One of the selling points for me, I think, was that I was 30 years old and single. And the CAP angle.
didn’t go. Ended up working well for me. It would have been interesting to say the least, but I suspect I would have been basically a janitor. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And they aren’t running off to live on Mars, they are running off to die on Mars.
I’ve said on this board before, that given the chance go into space for a prolonged period, I would go even knowing I could never come back. That I’d be willing to do that, would disqualify me.
So, how do they choose people then? You’d have to have a pretty good idea that you’re not coming home.
I agree. I recognize that the Mars One program isn’t going to happen but if it were real, I’d go. It would be a more interesting experience than the vast majority of people ever have.
James Nicoll (the well-known SF fan and originator of the phrase that starts “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore” has been trying to decide whether MarsOne is more like the Darien scheme (Darien scheme - Wikipedia - a colonization attempt by Scotland that bankrupted the whole country) or the Poyais scam (Gregor MacGregor - Wikipedia - a fraudulent colony that defrauded (and in some cases, led to the death of) those who invested) - I think he’s leaning towards Poyais… http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5281664.html