When I’ve previously written about Mars One, the Dutch proposal to send people there on a one-way trip, I’ve expressed a considerable degree of doubt that the entire enterprise was in any way a realistic proposition, and while I would truly love it to be real, I’ve never thought it was, there are simply too many technical issues for which there are currently no viable solutions …
- Radiation – how will they shield their
victimsvolunteers on the journey there? - Pressure – Mars does not just lack oxygen, it also lacks pressure and is only about 0.6% of what we find at sea level here
- Temperature – the average temperature on the surface is -55 C (that’s -67F)
All of that, and much more are not trivial issues, and right now they have no credible solutions.
New Insights
Joseph Roche, one of the final 100 selected to go (I checked, he is really on their list), has been interviewed for a rather interesting article in which he spills the beans about his rather astonishing interaction with the folks at Mars One, and it would appear to confirm much of what I’ve previously written. As a summary, his revelations are as follows …
So, here are the facts as we understand them: Mars One has almost no money. Mars One has no contracts with private aerospace suppliers who are building technology for future deep-space missions. Mars One has no TV production partner. Mars One has no publicly known investment partnerships with major brands. Mars One has no plans for a training facility where its candidates would prepare themselves. Mars One’s candidates have been vetted by a single person, in a 10-minute Skype interview.
In a word “yikes”, they do indeed appear to be all bluster and no substance at all, or to render a more technical description, the entire enterprise is basically nothing more than incandescent vapours and translucent surfaces (smoke and mirrors).
So what is going on then?
I speculate that this is simply a reality TV show and not an actual space mission at all and so the final crew will be stuck in a simulator for us to watch as they think they really are on their way … or … the final crew are actors, and we are all conned into thinking it is real when it is not, or some combination of that.
What however cannot be avoided is that if they persist with all this then somebody is being set for a fall, and it just may be all of us.
Do you really think Mars-One project deserve a “debunked” article?
What needs to be debunked?
– The project will probably never raise its expected funds? (hence its usual never-ending road map postponements).
Not a big deal: countless projects fail this way.
– Mars-One applicant is actually a reality TV show candidate who has almost as much chance to eventually walk on Mars than a The Voice candidate to become a pop star, I mean none.
Right. However would you, debunk The Voice?
– Many technology gaps have yet to be filled?
Yes, but not more than Apollo program, and i’m sure if they had money they would already be looking into tech issues, along with their partners from aerospace industry.
This is not a fact of pseudoscience, it’s the routine of any new technology.
– It’s Dutch
Yes, I must admit it… Dutch, not US.
My opinions:
– I bet Mars-One will fail to send people to Mars but I would gamble a few cents on the TV show.
– Travel to Mars is a reasonable objective: as a case study it’s a healthy brain exercise (same thing with Mars terraforming). As an actual public or private project, but serious this time, it would bring many technology achievements.
– It’s par of human nature:
Since Homo erectus 2 million years ago, to the May Flower 400 years ago, many people have taken a one way ticket to a new world.
Many died.
But without the human urge of migration in our genes, we would be still sucking fruits in our tropical forest