[space] Is Mars-one a scam?

[Kryten]

Think 500 years ago: "How does sending some chump to the Americas benefit all of us, or any of us?"

By grabbing a bunch of gold and a bunch of slaves, making the people behind the expeditions very rich. When they ran out of gold and slaves, they imported slaves from elsewhere and started growing stuff like sugar and tobacco that couldn't grow in Europe, again making certain people very rich. You might notice there are no slaves, easily accessible gold, tobacco, or sugar on Mars. In fact, you might notice there are no resources of any kind on Mars that we can't just get easier here.

[RuBisCO]

By grabbing a bunch of gold and a bunch of slaves, making the people behind the expeditions very rich. When they ran out of gold and slaves, they imported slaves from elsewhere and started growing stuff like sugar and tobacco that couldn't grow in Europe, again making certain people very rich. You might notice there are no slaves, easily accessible gold, tobacco, or sugar on Mars. In fact, you might notice there are no resources of any kind on Mars that we can't just get easier here.

Oh but there is a resource: space. I don't know if you noticed but the human species is at >7 billion and growing by 2.6 people a second, there are serious concerns if we can achieve a high standard of living of all or even most of the next generations, as is a billion people go to sleep every night hungry, most living off a few hundred dollars a year of income, subsistence, no medical care, high childhood mortality rate to disease that could easily be cured or prevent if there was enough resources to go around.

Now yes maybe if we liquidate the rich, put them against the wall, we could spread the wealth around and support maybe 10 billion very well, chances are higher though that we would just create another wealthy class with even greater power and even lower social mobility in the process. The animal farm is very real, because we are animals.

Developing the technology to colonize mars alone has great spin-off in improving habitability of this planet. Putting a colony on mars could very well save us from ourselves from what ever calamity we humans make of our future here, be it global ecological disaster, global economical collapse or good old fashion nuclear war.

[Kerbart]

Sure the past sucked, but they got things done, our generation on the other hand are so lazy and slothful, fattening up on the standard of living that previous generations slaved and bled to achieve that we will likely make future generations do the slaving and bleeding all over again because of what we squander. History very well may repeat its self because we did not learn from it, if history is to teach us anything it is to seize the day.

And yet that gnarly rockhard previous generation, with all their hard work, never managed to set up a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole, which really is dead easy when you think of it. If they weren't able to do that. (We still don't have a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole, by the way...) how could we do it.

And if we can't get a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole off the ground, how can we do it on Mars? It's really not that easy.

[Rokker]

And yet that gnarly rockhard previous generation, with all their hard work, never managed to set up a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole, which really is dead easy when you think of it. If they weren't able to do that. (We still don't have a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole, by the way...) how could we do it.

And if we can't get a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole off the ground, how can we do it on Mars? It's really not that easy.

But... there is no demand for a self sustaining colony at the South Pole. Also the South Pole and Mars are different enough that I think a self-sustaining South Pole colony wouldnt have many requirements at all similar to Mars.

[Kryten]

Oh but there is a resource: space.

Irrelevant. There is no way we can move billions of people off-planet, and even if we could there's plenty of uninhabited 'space' right here where they'd be better off.

[RuBisCO]

And yet that gnarly rockhard previous generation, with all their hard work, never managed to set up a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole, which really is dead easy when you think of it. If they weren't able to do that. (We still don't have a self-sustaining colony on the South Pole, by the way...) how could we do it.

They neither had the technology nor time, between the wars and depressions, to do so. If we were willing to develop the technology, we could do it, we could mine Antarctica for a pretty penny, in fact we could and are doing the same with the ocean depths already, mine you via telepresence control robots.

Now this is my transhumanist theory, but if we wait to colonize mars when the technology makes it safe and easy, we won't be colonize mars with people, in fact humans will be completely obsolete by then, and humans having never dared to establish themselves off-world, will die off here on this world, an evolutionary step. Now I've been playing devils advocate all this time, I'm fine with humanity dying off once we have created our successor and honestly feel there is little chance we will ever colonize space, not as humans, because we are too shortsighted, lazy and selfish to do so: talking apes deserve their fate.

Irrelevant. There is no way we can move billions of people off-planet, and even if we could there's plenty of uninhabited 'space' right here where they'd be better off.

Don't need to move billions, just a few thousand at most. There is no space here on this planet safe from the needs, wants and wrath of other people, their nations and their nuclear weapons.

Edited October 5, 2015 by RuBisCO

[davidy12]

I love space flight, but I could never be an astronaut. Even if Mars One worked perfectly, I guarantee you that someone on that mission would go crazy and break the habitats. Just imagine, no way to return home, on a planet 140 million miles away. *gets shotgun and puts it in the mouth*.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't colonize Mars, but that's easily 100+ years away. First some manned sample return missions then focus on colonization.

[LordFerret]

There is a reason why there are only science research stations in Antarctica ... a UN Treaty. There will be no colonies built there.

[adsii1970]

The United Nations declared Antarctica as "off limits" for many reasons, all of which are valid IF you give that kind of power to the UN. The main goal was to prevent an arms race and future wars over territory. It has been interesting watching some of the UN bureaucrats determine how Lunar and Mars colonization and development should go. Personally, I believe that once colonies are established on either body, they should be given the right to self-govern. No government on Earth would be capable of responding to the needs that might exist in an off-world colony.

With that said, I think the next logical development would be in desert lands such as the American Southwest and Africa. IF we are ever to tame the wilderness of Mars, we would first have to be able to work out many of the same issues to develop desert wastelands - such as water conservation, near-complete waste recycling, etc.

Before Mars, I also believe we must return to the Moon and colonize it first. It would be far easier to launch ships to Mars from lunar orbit than from LEO.

Edited October 5, 2015 by adsii1970

[Findthepin1]

The Antarctic Treaty only applies to the countries that signed it.

Edited September 19, 2016 by Findthepin1

[Nibb31]

There is a reason why there are only science research stations in Antarctica ... a UN Treaty. There will be no colonies built there.

And the reason there is a UN Treaty is because nobody has any interest in colonizing Antarctica.

[Albert VDS]

And the reason there is a UN Treaty is because nobody has any interest in colonizing Antarctica.

That's not the case, it exists to stop countries from claiming resources.

To actually extract the resource you would need to create settlements/villages.

Or in other words; everyone is interested in Antarctica so much so that it's decided that no one can have it.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Albert VDS

[WestAir]

Albert,

I know I have the power of google at my fingertips, but do you have a source for this? I'd be extremely interested to read up on some of the history between the UN and Antarctica.

[Nibb31]

That's not the case, it exists to stop countries from claiming resources.

To actually extract the resource you would need to create settlements/villages.

The thing is, extracting resources from Antarctica is hard and expensive. Therefore nobody is really interested in doing it. Places like the Sandwich Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, Svalbard, or the Cape Horn have the same sort of resources and easier to get to, yet nobody is stripmining those places because they are just so remote and inhospitable.

[Rockomax]

Furthremore, what is the point of manned mission to Mars!?!

@Diche Bach

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

then what is the reason we went to the moon??!?!?

[tater]

5 hours ago, Rockomax said:

Furthremore, what is the point of manned mission to Mars!?!

@Diche Bach

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

then what is the reason we went to the moon??!?!?

Because the US was in a PR battle with the Soviet Union. It's not more complicated than that.

[Matuchkin]

On 21/08/2013 at 11:51 AM, Drunkrobot said:

Yes. I really cannot stress it enough that Mars One is a PowerPoint presentation. They talk about what they're going to do on Mars, but not how they plan to get there.

When any one piece of equipment in this picture exists, Mars One is worth talking about.

Well, we have the Dragon, though without side-ports...

[Spaceception]

5 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

Well, we have the Dragon, though without side-ports...

It's not Mars One's yet however.

 

More importantly, is the life support, apparently studies have been done, but I don't know how good they are.

 

Also, I might be doing an idiot card right now, but MO seems a lot like Mars direct, without the return vehicle.

[DBowman]

13 hours ago, Spaceception said:

More importantly, is the life support, apparently studies have been done, but I don't know how good they are.

A company that they could contract for the life support thinks it's 'doable' at a 'first cut evaluation', they have a vested interest but I imagine they would not publish something indefensible (probably it comes down to how valid 'first cut' was). Mars One plan is to grow a large portion of the food to cut food shipping and use the plants for (part of?) the CO2/O2 cycle. 

Two MIT Phd candidates did an evaluation of the life support and the logistics of maintaining sufficient spare parts and consumables. IT has a couple of flaws:

One part of that study got headlined as 'they will all die in a 60 days' because the MIT model coped with a gas partial pressure imbalance (not enough CO2 for the plants? too much O2 for them? I cannot recall sorry) by venting 'cabin air' - no one would do that because eventually you would deplete first all your N2 and eventually if you didn't burn yourself you'd vent all your O2 as well. Mars isn't short CO2, or they could burn the uneaten plant material to return the CO2 to the cycle.

The more substantial issue was the volume of spares and consumables (filters, etc) required, they claimed that before long Mars one would be shipping nothing but spares. For sure spares and consumables is what limits the max size of some remote facility but I think they overestimated the spares. Suppose you need S spares for one crew (crew A) to be 99% safe. They assumed the second crew (B) needed to bring 2S spares, S for A and S for B, but chances are A wont have used all it's original spares (99% chance they wont have) and A & B together don't need 2S spares to be 99% safe, 2S makes them 99.99% safe.

You could probably reduce spares and initial mass by not trying to do greenhouses etc; which are hard, massive, unproven etc - but I don't see Mars One publishing any comparative studies or break-even estimates. They seem to be running off a 'vision'.

It's not clear that Mars One is using criticisms like the MIT paper constructively, they seem too defensive and denialist. I think it's just a matter of $$ to make a One Way style mission plan work, but I don't know that Mars One org is up to the task.

[Diche Bach]

On 8/24/2013 at 7:40 PM, Seret said:

Ok, what do you think about the chances of splitting Jupiter and wearing it as snow shoes? Sounds plausible, right?

Classic.

Don't know if this person still hangs around here, but I wanted to pay homage by quoting this gem.