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Exploration

Throwing Shade on Mars One

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 23, 2015
Filed under ,
Throwing Shade on Mars One

Mars Missions Are A Scam, BuzzFeed
“It looks like a scam,” John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., told BuzzFeed News. “They don’t have any technology, they don’t have any agreements with the space industry. It looks very shaky.” The bigger problem? Mars One’s flaws too few spaceships, nonexistent life-support technologies, not nearly enough money, and, really, no good reason for going discredit all Mars exploration plans, including NASA’s.”
Mars One plan to colonise red planet unrealistic, says leading supporter, The Guardian
“Gerard ‘t Hooft, a Dutch Nobel laureate and ambassador for Mars One, said he did not believe the mission could take off by 2024 as planned. “It will take quite a bit longer and be quite a bit more expensive. When they first asked me to be involved I told them ‘you have to put a zero after everything’,” he said, implying that a launch date 100 years from now with a budget of tens of billions of dollars would be an achievable goal. But, ‘t Hooft added, “People don’t want something 100 years from now.”
No more ‘Big Brother’ on the red planet, Daily Mail
“Last week Mars One announced a list of 100 people who will train on Earth for a one-way mission to the red planet in 2025. But the venture’s accompanying reality TV show – which was to be made by the makers of Big Brother to document their training and new lives on the red planet – has been shelved after the companies were ‘unable to reach an agreement on details’, MailOnline has learned. Instead, Mars One is working with a new production company to record the colonists’ progress.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

56 responses to “Throwing Shade on Mars One”

  1. Odyssey2020 says:
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    I’m happy that someone in the know rightly called this a scam. Yeah, Mars One will plead for donations, they’ll never get off the ground, and you’ll never see your money back.

    For sure, Mars One is a scam.

  2. Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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    “they don’t have any agreements with the space industry”

    except with Paragon, to develop life support systems, Surrey, to develop a communications satellite, and Lockheed Martin, to develop a technology testbed lander…

    • TheBrett says:
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      I’m pretty sure they just paid Lockheed-Martin for a proposal on how to develop a potential technology testbed lander, not for an actual lander. So no, not much – and no prospect of significantly more funding in the future.

      • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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        Not a proposal, but a design study, so the design for the lander is essentially complete. yes, they do need the funding to build it. Mars One has said several times they have some big investment firms who are interested in substantially funding their mission. we will have to see if they can get the money they need to build this design within the next few months.

        • TheBrett says:
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          If the design for the lander is “essentially complete”, then where is it? Or is this supposed to be a proprietary lander?

          Mars One has said several times they have some big investment firms who are interested in substantially funding their mission.

          None of which are public about being interested in this, if they actually are. It wouldn’t be the first time that Lansdorp oversold potential revenue sources and suppliers – this is the guy who thought the television rights for a reality TV program of the Mars One colonists would pay for the mission.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            presumably both Lockheed Martin and Mars One have the technical information for it. i understand that the design study was only recently completed, so the Mars One people are probably still reviewing it. hopefully they can complete their review soon, get the needed funding, and get the next round of contracts, for manufacturing and assembly, going. they still have some leeway to do this in time for the 2018 launch window, though that time is rapidly growing short.

            in all fairness, their TV show isn’t going yet. while it likely won’t generate nearly as much interest / revenue as they hope, we don’t yet know how much that is.

          • Odyssey2020 says:
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            They’ve raised over 700K from over 103 countries(Armenia donated a buck!).

            Mars One has a long way to go.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            yes, they certainly do. like i said earlier, if they want to utilize the 2018 launch window, they don’t have much time to secure an investor.

        • AstroInMI says:
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          They’re not going to meet the 2018 deadline:

          http://spacenews.com/mars-o

          Plus there is a huge, huge funding gap between doing a study and doing a real launch. Even if the lander was free, the launch of InSight is $160 million. There is simply no way they have the money to do a lander on hand and I see no way they are going to raise the money to do it.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            well, they can still make the 2018 launch window, but time is short. they would need to get going on hardware production contracts within the next few months. like i said earlier, if they want to utilize the 2018 launch window, they don’t have much time to secure an investor. the way to do it is to have a deep-pocketed investor provide the money. Mars One has previously said that there are investment firms interested in providing large portions of the required funding.

          • AstroInMI says:
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            You have more faith in Mars One’s statements than I do. 🙂

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            well, it’s crunch time. we’ll find out if what they’ve said can be given weight soon.

          • Rusure Boutthat says:
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            I hear you saying the money will come from an an investor. Investors invest to make a return on their investment. How will the Mars One project be able to generate any “return” for the investor. Please scratch off “an investor” as a realistic way of coming up with the money.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            Mars One has been talking to investors and investment groups for quite some time now, they would get ROI based on advertising, which could be substantial because Mars One is highly visible.

            A large investor is about the only way to get the amount of money they need on a short timescale. However, since they have now officially gone to the next launch window, they have another two years to work on funding.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        You have to pay for a proposal?

  3. Ian1102 says:
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    “Scam” is a very harsh word for what this group is doing. I haven’t met the group and while I understand how some people will use that word to describe them, to me I feel the correct word to describe Mars One is “aspirational”. While they were never going to make their stated goals on their timeline, it has been interesting to see if and how they could accomplish productive activities along the way by using innovative methods of leveraging the public interest. In that respect, they can still have potential, even if they don’t live up to the headline goals.

    The MIT group, for all its good work analysis, didn’t much help. I wish they would have a approached it from the perspective of “What plan could work?” instead of “does this plan work?”, especially since their assumptions came from a probably overly strict reading of the Mars One website.

  4. TheBrett says:
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    I’ve read some long-form pieces on Mars One. I’m honestly not sure if Lansdorp is deliberately trying to scam people, or whether he really is that deluded about the level of support it’s going to get. It’s not exactly a hugely profitable scam.

    *Sigh* All the vaporware and empty rhetoric in manned space exploration just makes me cynical. Of course I also feel kind of bad criticizing it, since it’s mostly harmless.

    • PsiSquared says:
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      I don’t see it as mostly harmless. Manned exploration already has weak support among the public, and fiascos like Mars One might weaken that support more.

      • Odyssey2020 says:
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        Exactly, we don’t need people making a space travel a bad joke.

      • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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        No less a fiasco than the dozens of other failed programs that litter the pages of spaceflight history. If we’re all honest about it, its failure would really be no more a fiasco, either.

        • Odyssey2020 says:
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          Name another endeavor that took money from the worldwide public, promised a manned spaceflight to another planet, that turned out to be nothing but a scam like this Mars One BS?

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            i don’t think there is, since that’s a pretty high bar. it looks like Mars One is the first private group who has set for itself the specific task of putting a group of people on Mars, but there’s a lot more failures than that. anyone with more than a passing interest in space exploration should know that.

            the closest thing i can think of is the L5 Society, founded in 1975, which wanted to establish a colony at the L5 Lagrange point. the L5 Society never came close to achieving that goal, but turned into a pretty influential space science and exploration advocacy group, eventually forming the present-day National Space Socieity.

            at any rate, Mars One isn’t a scam. they are very serious about going to Mars.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            For some reason Biosphere 2 comes to mind. It wasn’t a scam, or at least if anyone was bilked it was only Ed Bass. The project seemed to have good intentions and generated a lot of interest, even excitement, but the aspirations turned out to be too high, as even their commendable achievements were not enough to avoid controversy and ridicule, and thus overall it may have been a setback for other projects of this type getting funding. I’m not comparing it with Mars One as there are a lot of differences, I’m just saying it brings Biosphere 2 to remembrance.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            yeah, Biosphere 2 comparisons seem to come up with people who don’t like Mars One. you’re right, they have very different problems to take on, but there are some lessons Mars One can learn as well, particularly in management and working with rather than against scientists.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            I think another lesson may be in how to manage expectations with the press and public. If the Biosphere 2 team had said from the beginning that they were going to see how long they could go with closed loop on the first attempt, but that this will be an incremental approach and they don’t expect on the first attempt to duplicate a two year Mars mission, then they wouldn’t have opened themselves up to as much criticism when they didn’t reach that goal. Maybe they did say that at times but maybe not clearly enough because the public perception from what I remember was that they were expecting to go two years closed loop on the first attempt. When word started getting out that after several months they were having to supplement oxygen, and rumors of supplemented food, they lost all public credibility. When in reality they did an admirable job in my opinion for a first attempt, but the expectations they had allowed to be built up in the media wouldn’t allow for this and it came across as a failure and to some people it was all just a con or a bunch of New Agers making fools of themselves.

            Elon Musk is an example in my opinion of someone who manages expectations correctly. For example recovering boosters, from the beginning he said he expected it will take a long time, and I remember on the first attempt he said he would be surprised if the first attempt succeeded. On later attempts I think he upped that to 50/50. That strategy seems to have worked as they could even plow one into a barge in spectacular fashion and most people seem to understand this is work in progress, since he never claimed that he expected early and quick success. And in fact the successes seem to be happening more rapidly than he had predicted publicly.

            I’m not as familiar with how Mars One handles their public relations, but I’m guessing it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement of what they are trying to do and allow optimism to set up high expectations, but hopefully they are aware of the importance of finding the right balance of optimism and realistic expectation in their public relations.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            yeah, the 2 year goal could have been achievable and successful if the managers had done a better job. It would have been better to have cancelled when it became clear that something was using up all the oxygen (it turned out that the concrete used to build the biodome was an oxygen sink), and then tried again when that problem had been solved.

          • DTARS says:
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            NASAs SLS & Orion Program of course.

            Much bigger scam than Mars One

            When Nelson said show me the money, I wish someone had the gusts to say cancel SLS and use that money. Not that it would change anything.

        • PsiSquared says:
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          I’ll believe in Mars One when they actually have something produced, and by produced I’m referring to hardware and real, concrete plans, not drama.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            that’s a fair position to have, and it’s probably a better one, to wait and see if Mars One succeeds or fails before calling it a fiasco.

      • DTARS says:
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        Think about the similarities between the Mars One Astronauts and the NASA astronauts Mr. Squared. Both believe they’re going to Mars. But they’re not.

        • PsiSquared says:
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          I see no similarities between NASA astronauts and the alleged Mars One astronauts. If and when the “program” makes credible advances, then I’ll believe.

        • chuckc192000 says:
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          Not true! I went to a lecture by astronaut Randy Bresnik last week. Someone asked if he would be going to Mars. He said he thought nobody currently in a “blue suit” would be going to Mars. He said maybe their children or grandchildren would.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Indeed. I read Mars One as the efforts of starry-eyed individuals. A scam would mean they never intended to fund a Mars program, keeping or skimming funds back to themselves, which does not seem to be happening here.

      Guilty of over-reach. Like lots of us.

  5. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    If Mars One is a scam due to the aforementioned reasons then that would make NASA’s Mars hsf a scam as well, for the very same reasons and yet Bolden et al talk about a manned landing on Mars using SLS and Orion.
    Cheers

    • EtOH says:
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      I’m not usually a defender of Orion/SLS, but I don’t think this comparison is fair. Certainly NASA’s mars program is not on track to complete their stated goals with the current level of funding, but the ratio between the funding they have and the funding they need is not nearly as bad as for Mars One. All NASA needs to actually push ahead with its plan is stronger support from congress. While this doesn’t seem likely, one can at least imagine it happening, while the same cannot be said for whatever sequence of extraordinary events that would be required for Mars One to gain sufficient funding. Also consider the institutional track record; NASA has the world’s most advanced interplanetary program, and has actually landed people on another world before. Mars One hasn’t launched a single mission, and yet they are promising to land a person on Mars much sooner than NASA. I wouldn’t bet on SLS/Orion, but at least it’s plausible.

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      Not really. NASA’s current marching orders are to build SLS and Orion, so that’s what they’re doing. And let’s be clear, NASA does not yet actually have a defined manned Mars mission, they just talk about it as a long-term goal. If SLS/Orion get cancelled, that doesn’t mean NASA’s HSF program during the time period was a scam, just that NASA’s marching orders changed. We should all be used to this by now; NASA’s mission changes with nearly every new administration.

    • DTARS says:
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      Just read this now 🙂

      Spot on!!!!

      Imaginary Exploration Program

  6. Komentaja Info says:
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    The 1999 Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft was the big name behind Mars One. His public disaffection is a blow to the credibility of the project. Obviously, there were heated discussions that led to this. I am hoping that heavy hitters, like Elon Musk, Dennis Tito and Bill Gates will step in and rescue the effort. Two problems I see with the Mars One business model are lack of self-sustaining industrial capacity on (or near) Mars and perception that the one-way ticket is a prelude to a struggle for survival and early death of the colonists. The task of a Mars colony should be to create a vital, productive addition (or replacement if need be) for civilization on Earth in as short a time as possible. The Moon also contends for such a colony site, but one of the essentials, volatiles, have only been indirectly assayed with great uncertainly. It is surprising that no soft landings have taken place at the most likely site, the lunar south pole, to dig for ice. It makes sense for direct assays of the lunar poles to take place as soon as humanly possible to see if the Moon indeed lies on the critical path to space habitation, or must be bypassed for lack of resources that Mars has in abundance.

  7. Spacenut says:
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    I think Mars One’s main mistake has been to overestimate the support they would get from companies like Space X. The costs involved in a project like Mars One are probably not that far beyond their means when you consider the sums of money that can be generated within the entertainment industry. However the only feasible lander technology I can see being available by 2024 is modified Space X dragon capsules and while I am sure they would be happy to provide these for the right price Elon Musk’s own Mars plans will be keeping them pretty busy so I can see little interest on Space X’s part in going the extra mile to help Mars One keep to it’s schedule.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Money is the key enabler and if someone, anyone, waves development money under Elon’s nose, vs him and SpaceX footing the bill alone, he’ll take it. He wants to go to Mars, but he’s a businessman first.
      The gist of all of these discussions is money. Money talks BS walks. But they won’t have a lot of it, so they’ll have to be carefull where they spend it. As far as launches go, all cost savings roads lead to SpaceX right now.
      I think that as soon as SpaceX has a human-rated launch system, they’ll be looking for partners to head to Mars. Red Dragon can very easily be replanned for one-way Mars landings with people on board.
      They’ll also need Bigelow.

      • Odyssey2020 says:
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        I don’t know. I’m thinking in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars to get to Mars one way or the other.

        • PsiSquared says:
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          The large sum of money that it will likely take to get to Mars likely means that any Mars mission will have multiple partners.

          • Odyssey2020 says:
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            I’m not sure when we’ll go to Mars and personally it’s not a big, big deal to me. That’s just a personal preference but I do accept the fact that a lot of folks are crazy about going to Mars, so that’s cool.

            In General, I think the more people are told “we can’t go to Mars” the more likely it’s going to happen..we’re just that stubborn. I don’t think it’ll be done by NASA or anyone other govts by 2050. There’s just too much debt.

  8. Saturn1300 says:
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    A lot of people have had this idea. They have got a little further. NASA and Elon Musk have the same idea. They are a lot further along. Russia not very far along. All the space comment people. Not far along. Predicting the future is hard.

  9. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    I’ve never seriously believed that Mars One will go all the way. I’m pretty sure that its main investors plan to recoup their investment by making a reality TV series of their training program. The degree of media coverage of Mars One compared to, say, SpaceX’s Mars plans or even NASA’s betrays a cynical and well-funded publicity machine.

    That said, the fundamental idea – people going to Mars and not coming back for some time, if ever – will happen eventually. It’s just that I’ve got to put the standard ‘in 20 years or more’ disclaimer on it.

    • Rusure Boutthat says:
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      The “20 years or more disclaimer” was being used 20 years ago. I fear it will still be being used 20 years from now.

  10. Riley 1066 says:
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    Sending people to Mars to die sounds … criminal to me. Calling it “colonization” is a lie. We won’t be ready to send colonists for decades at best.

    Just because everyone at Roanoke Colony died doesn’t mean its right to replicate the results on Mars.

    • Spacenut says:
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      I don’t think anyone is going to purposely send people to Mars to “Die” life is seemingly far more robust that we give it credit for being and while there are no guarantees in any mission to space let alone Mars I think we would adapt, technologically, mentally and physically to the problems encountered surprisingly rapidly. And as for Roanoke Colony there is no evidence whatsoever they all died!

  11. SpaceHoosier says:
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    I know this is a ‘stale’ thread now, but saw this article (as many may have already) and thought Mars One may be more AmWay than actual endeavor to push the boundaries of HSF.

    http://gizmodo.com/mars-one