Mars One

Mars One. A commercial mission to Mars, funded by making it a media spectacle. One way trip, four more settlers shipped in every two years, starting in 2022.

The people are not lunatics, and the plan doesn't seem obviously insane to me. There are many open questions though; to me the main thing is that they seem to have getting there figured out pretty well, but how to survive and what to do once there much less. Is this whole thing crazy? Totally doable? Something in between?

Well i don't think its crazy if they send a waldo robot up first and it runs a greenhouse that proves it can support people with air and food.

Mind you i am not sure how this split from the human race will develop are we going to send our greatest explorers and scientists to be the backup plan for the human genome no we are going to send the rejects from big brother whose exploits are going to be so outrageous and probably at some point illegal on this planet that it will sell a hundred $billion of advertising or so to the ground-hugging masses.

Mind you having said that given a ticket i would go.

It does sound interesting, and they purport to have backers and support form aerospace suppliers (of course, only if they have money up front to pay for the gear). I have no doubt that they will have plenty of volunteers for the one way trip. Investors will probably be harder to find.

I do think they should have something on their home page background other than showing a bunch (flock?) of Dragon capsules siamesed together on Mars. My first thought when seeing that before watching the video is, "They expect four people to spend ~2 years cooped up inside a Dragon and remain alive and sane at Mars?!" Although I guess that would make for more interesting reality TV.


A lunar project is much more likely and realistic in their time frame.

There's supposed to be an inflatable, partially buried habitat behind the Dragons. Having thought about it some more, I've become a bit more pessimistic. We really don't know how to do closed-loop ecosystems, there's the issue of radiation and bone loss in microgravity, and so on. If they can get enough money to build all the hardware, I'd give those first four astronauts a 60/40 chance of making it to Mars in mostly good health, but I don't think I'd give them more than 20% chance of still being alive when the next four arrive. If the next four arrive.

Yep. Which is why the reality TV/"shared experience" stick is such cold-blooded genius. No one can resist watching a train-wreck.

But I think their odds of gathering the resources and governmental permissions (because we aren't grown-ups that can do what we want) to actually conduct the project are much lower. Like single digits.