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Bas Lansdorp Answers Your Questions About Going to Mars
by eldavojohn
This question may boil down to cultural differences but I'm an American, fairly non-nomadic and I have a lot of cargo -- both mentally and physically. There are places of my youth that I may never return to and I currently sit a thousand miles away from. But I'm okay with this because if I flipped out one day I could just board a plane or road trip it back. I'm aware that settlers who came to the Americas faced similar issues but they were moving to a new land that was already inhabited by humans and had new places to offer them. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell. I would surmise that someone would need to be legally insane to willingly go to a place without society, without parks, without schools, without culture, without even atmosphere, without children, without the elderly and without the prospect of seeing those things first hand again. Furthermore, should a sane person make such a decision I can see no perceivable way they would remain sane. Even if the person is nomadic or adventurous in nature, you will bring them to a new world and require four of them to remain cooped up in a thousand cubic meters.
Call it cabin fever, call it space madness, call it batshit insanity, call it whatever you want but aside from bombarding them with digital crap from Earth, how are you going to combat it? I know your ratings go up but what happens when all your reality television is 90% insane ramblings of home?
Bas Lansdorp: Will the astronauts go insane? The author of the question has answered a large part of this question in his own text. The key to success is a very careful selection procedure. The author 'has a lot of cargo -- both mentally and physically' — typically a person that will not be selected (and in this case would not even apply) for the position. However, the author should not forget that not everyone is alike. I'm quite sure that the author would not have applied for a position in the team of South Pole explorer Shackleton. This was the announcement:
"Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, and bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success."
Despite the ominous tone of the ad, the response was overwhelming.
Mars One will carefully select the crew for a number of skills and qualities. They will be people who have dreamt their whole life of going to Mars and in many case will have pursued careers that will increase the odds of being selected for this kind of mission. The selected team will be very smart, skilled, mentally stable and very healthy. They will go to Mars to live their dream.
On Mars, they will be busy. They will improve the habitat and extend it with new units sent from Earth and with local materials. They will do research — their own research but also gather data for the research of others (for example universities). And they will prepare the settlement for the second crew that lands two years after. Every two years a new crew will arrive, such that the settlement will slowly become a small village and a more attractive place to live for more and more people.
We have discussed our plan with experienced psychologists. One of Mars One's advisers is Norbert Kraft M.D., who has worked on astronaut selection at NASA and JAXA. He wrote an interesting article on this in the Huffington Post together with Prof. Dr. Raye Kass.
What are the entertainment options like?
by alen
If I move to mars for the rest of my life, what are the entertainment options? What am I supposed to do in my off time?
BL: The astronauts will have many things they can do on Mars. They can do most of the indoor activities that people can do on Earth: read, play games, write, paint, work out in the gym, watch TV, use the Internet, contact friends at home and so on.
There will be some limitations because of the long distance between Earth and Mars, resulting in time delays: they will have to request the movies or news broadcasts they want to see in advance. So if an astronaut would like to watch the Super bowl, he (or she) could request it and it would be uploaded to the server on Mars. There will always be the time delay of at least three minutes, so the people on Mars would know who won a few minutes after the people on Earth.
Easy Internet access will be limited to their preferred sites that are constantly updated on the local Mars web server. Other websites will take between 6 and 45 minutes to appear on their screen - first 3-22 minutes for your click to reach Earth and then another 3-22 minutes for the website data to reach Mars. Contacting friends at home is possible by video, voice or text message (e-mail, whatsapp, sms), but a real time dialogue is not possible because of the time delay.
Suicide options?
by Anonymous Coward
Will the astronauts be supplied with the means to end their lives if they find themselves facing hopeless circumstances (e.g., slow life-support failure, debilitating depression)?
BL: The design of the Mars settlement will include a very high level of redundancy on all crucial systems like life support. The astronauts will have received extensive training in repairing any failure in the system, either with spare parts, or with parts harvested from other broken equipment.
Also, the astronauts will have been carefully selected by psychiatrists. In the early days of space flight astronauts received cyanide capsules. Our astronauts will not receive such pills. Mars One will select and train the crews to have the ability to respond adaptively to the challenges of unanticipated problems and to collaborate under highly stressful conditions.
Put your lives where your mouths are
by Lanfranc
I just have one very simple question: I understand that Mars One intend to send four people at a time to Mars. I also note that the Mars One team currently consists of four people. So are you and your three business partners willing to be the first group to go, and if not, why not?
BL: As explained in the first answer, crew selection will be the key to success for a Mars mission. The selected astronauts will be very smart, skilled, mentally stable, sociable and very healthy. It's unlikely that even one of us would live up to the high requirements, let alone that we would be the perfect team. Also, it is our goal to involve the whole world so the team should be international. The public selection process where the audience can influence who gets to go is a very important part of involving the world. The people on Mars are our eyes and ears: they will tell us what it is like to be on Mars. By asking help of the audience to select them, we make sure that they are people that humanity would like to be their reporters on life on Mars.
The astronauts that we send to Mars will be very smart people. They will understand every risk and will have ample time during their years of training to weigh the risks. They can always decide not to go.
In-Situ Fuel Production?
by Cap'nSmithers
Are you exploring any possibilities for creating fuel for a return trip while on Mars? There is at least one study for the possibility, most likely more. If you're planning on the trip being a one-way mission, why not at least experiment with the idea for future Mars missions? And if it works, you get a ride home, and you've made some pretty hefty contributions to space travel.
BL: Mars One is proposing a mission where humans settle on Mars for the rest of their lives. This eliminates the need for fuel production and the great power requirements, fuel storage capabilities and hardware equipment weight and volume that are associated with fuel production.
Producing the fuel is actually not the hardest part of returning humans to Earth. The hardest parts are the rocket that should launch them from the surface to Mars orbit and it's the Earth return vehicle with all the supplies that needs to take them from Mars orbit to Earth. Fuel production with elements present on Mars and in Mars-like conditions has already been demonstrated on Earth.
There are several products that can be produced on Mars. We are very interested in techniques to build habitat extensions from Martian materials, build a power production system on Mars with local materials or a machine that can produce plastics. We believe that providing the astronauts with building blocks to improve their lives on Mars more important than demonstrating fuel production.
However, fuel production is certainly interesting once the above technologies are available on Mars. Fuel for a manned return trip may not be required for a long time, but a sample return mission would also greatly benefit form fuel produced on Mars. Such a sample return mission would also build the experience to send future manned missions back to Earth.
Pioneers
by tmosley
It seems to me that a mission of this type which is meant to be permanent must by necessity focus on the production of those things which are necessary for survival on Mars. This means that your colonists, and they should be called colonists, will need to focus on the production of air, water, food, living space, and manufactured goods, in that order. Media spectacle or no, that is the order that things must take, prior to wasting time with research (wasting time in the hunter-gatherer sense).
I think that the only way you are going to be able to get your colonists to do what you want them to do will be to have them earn money with their scientific research/media nonsense such that it funds resupply missions.
That said, what is your business plan with regards to production of goods on Mars, and resupply missions?
BL: Local production of water, breathable air and food will be provided from the start. Water and breathable air will even be produced on Mars before the astronauts depart from Earth. (Please read here.)
Providing them with a way to produce habitable volume and energy with local materials is also high on our list, but these technologies are not 'off the shelf'. Mars One plans to send out a request for proposals to have these technologies developed. The poser of the question is absolutely correct: getting things up and running on Mars and survival are more crucial than research.
The astronauts will however have a keen interest in doing science on Mars. One of the crew might well be a biologist or a geologist.
While the scientific research may not be high on the list of priorities, the media will be. This is a major source of revenues for the mission and the astronauts will obviously know this. They know that they are on Mars thanks to the public interest. The media revenues will be required to finance supply missions and new crews going to Mars.
Power Draw?
by eldavojohn
Exactly how do you plan on broadcasting reality TV of your mission? Mars seems like a difficult place to get energy. When people's lives are at risk in a mercilessly harsh environment, isn't it a bit selfish for us to be asking them to use their solar panels to send us video of their daily lives? I understand the need for communications but how do you plan on sending enough video and audio back from the teams to make a reality show?
Is the following statement morally reprehensible to you? "I know you've had a long day but we need someone to do a walk out to dust off the south solar panels because we're not getting enough power to transmit cameras five and six to monitor you while you sleep."
BL: Mars One plans to use solar panels for the Mars mission. Solar power is very reliable on Mars. The system will be designed to deliver enough power for essential systems in the settlement during a solar storm, yielding in a large surplus power when there is no storm (read more on that here).
The data transmission system to the Mars orbiting satellite requires only a limited amount of power, which is included in the power budget for dust storm conditions.
Our goal is to put humans on Mars, our business model is the media event around the humans mission. The media event is what makes it possible to finance the mission to Mars. The communications system design allows for 4 video + audio channels streaming full time from Mars to Earth. The astronauts know this and know that it will be part of their tasks on Mars - they are on Mars thanks to the public interest.
If your moral question actually is "won't the reality TV be too intrusive?" please note that there won't be any camera's in their bedrooms, so there will be no energy wasted on transmitting video images of sleeping astronauts.
Environmental Questions
by Reality Master 101
I've always been of the opinion that once a private Mars mission gets close to becoming reality, scientists and the government will go in league to shut it down because of environmental contamination. The question of whether there is life on Mars is still open, and once you have a group setting up a settlement, the planet is potentially contaminated forever with Earth bacteria, which might even kill off native bacteria, if any.
My question is, are you concerned with the contamination question and do you think you might be prevented from going if scientists get the right politicians to listen? You sort-of have a FAQ question about this ("Will the mission be harmful to Mars' environment?"), but you don't really answer it.
BL: Mars One will discuss with the COSPAR panel of planetary protection and the COSPAR panel of exploration what measures need to be taken with respect to contamination of the Mars with Earth life forms. Prof. Dr. Pascale Ehrenfreund of the COSPAR panel of exploration is one of our advisers. From discussions with these two panels, Mars One will take the required actions.
Space for growing food?
by Mr. Theorem
Your FAQ, in the "sustainability" question, states: "The first four will also be carrying a device similar to a portable greenhouse, that will allow them to grow their own food."
If we take 2000 calories per day as a baseline human need, that's 730,000 calories per [Earth] year, or about 3 million calories per Earth year per four-person crew, and the total need will grow by 3 million calories per Earth year every two years as more missions arrive. The diet would need to be varied, both to guard against catastrophic crop failure and to provide an appropriate spectrum of nutrients, and a reasonable estimate (e.g. based on a combination of corn, beans, and squash) suggests that 1 acre on Earth can provide such 3 million calories. But Mars gets, on average, only about 44% of the insolation as Earth does, so the first-order estimate suggests you'd need about 2.3 acres per mission-load of astronauts to grow a subsistence diet. This presumes that radiation won't negatively impact the crops, that the yield throughout the Mars growing season scales comparable to the Earth's, that your soil is comparable to Earth's, and many more things. You'll also need enough additional carbon and water to make the non-edible parts of the plants and soil, and you'll need to make sure there exists a suitable microbial community to decompose crop waste and turn it back into a useable food-growing medium (i.e. compost).
I don't see in your concept drawing anything that approaches the size of land that would be needed to come anywhere close to such sustainable food production. Do you even have a back-of-the-envelope plan for sustainable food production, or is the bulk of the astronauts' calories going to need to come in perpetuity from the Earth?
BL: Food from Earth will only serve as emergency rations, the astronauts will eat fresh food that they produce on Mars. Mars One will make use of high efficient plant growing methods that require much less space (e.g. www.plantlab.nl). Food production will be hydroponic, eliminating the need for soil. Food production will happen indoor, lighted by LED lighting. By providing the plants with only the frequencies of light that they use most efficiently, power consumption is limited. Some of the plants will be grown in multiple levels on top of each other, limiting space requirements. In total there will be about 50 m2 available for plant growth.
A thick layer of Martian soil on top of the inflatable habitat will protect the plans (and the astronauts) from radiation. CO2 for the plants is available from the Mars atmosphere and water is available through recycling and from the soil of Mars. Non-edible parts of the plants will be recycled, or will be stored until more advanced recycling equipment is shipped from Earth.
Funding sources
by Katatsumuri
Are you considering a mix of different funding sources, like Kickstarter, private donations / investors, government / corporate sponsorship? TV show alone may not be sufficient. Maybe accept free hardware / volunteer labor / services like rocket launches as donations, too?
On a related note, are you going to start the selection and training as soon as you have enough money for that first step? Or do you think it only makes sense if you have secured the funding for the actual trip? I personally think once this starts rolling, it will be easier to attract more funding.
BL: We are considering all the revenue possibilities that you mention. We do not expect to be offered free rocket launches, especially not of the quality that we need for our Mars missions.
Mars One will make limited use of free hardware for use on Earth and volunteer labour that is offered to us. Already, people are helping us with improvements to our website and with translation of the subtitles of our YouTube movie.
We will start the selection and training of the astronauts long before collecting the complete funding for the trip. As you say, it will be easier to attract funding when there is more publicity around our plans, and more progress achieved. We intend to start with the selection process within one year, after the completion of the conceptual design studies by our suppliers.
Mars One plan to obtain the necessary funding
by AnotherBlackHat
No media spectacle in the history of the Earth has garnered 6 billion dollars.
Why should we believe that your Mars landing would?
BL: Mars One is not just landing people on Mars, we are creating an adventure for everyone in the world to follow from 2013, when we start the astronaut selection, through 2022, when we depart to Mars, 2023 when the first crew lands to 2050 and beyond when there are dozens of people living and working on Mars.
NBC recently paid $4.4 billion for the broadcasting rights for the Olympic games in the USA only, from 2014 until 2020. That's the Winter Olympics of 2014 and 2018 and the Summer Olympics of 2016 and 2020, a total of 12 weeks of entertainment. This number does not include other revenues like sponsorships. The Olympic games of 2006 (winter games) and 2008 (summer games) together created revenues of $5.450 billion
We have discussed the business case with various large parties in the media industry. They are without exception convinced of the revenue model.
I bet the reason 1st astronauts got cyanide was to avoid painful interrogation if landing in enemy territory...
Lots of it -- stinky, sweaty sex, built into the mission parameters.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
On the question about contamination of possible life on mars... Said absolutely nothing
I still think it's a scam.
i still want to know where you will get/produce the amount of toilet paper for the mission.
And why any possible solution is not used on earth.
Bad Lass Porn is an anagram of Bas Lansdorp.
The existence of a species is a race between evolution making you smart enough to get off your planet... ... and an unknown asteroid, hurtling through space, headed for a collision with your planet that will wipe out every member of your species.
Looks like we might just make it!
The one questions I wanted addressed was not included. What will be the sex make-up of the crew?
It seems to me that a mission of this type which is meant to be permanent must by necessity focus on the production of those things which are necessary for survival on Mars. This means that your colonists, and they should be called colonists, will need to focus on the production of air, water, food, living space, and manufactured goods, in that order.
No. 4 people are not "colonists." That is, I would not consider 4 people to be a colony--unless you have plans to add to those first four. 4 dudes is not a permanent settlement.
Now if those 4 people get in the business of making more people, those are colonists. So your list is short, of one item at least. "[The colonists] will need to focus on the production of air, water, food, living space, babies, and manufactured goods, in that order."
Media partners telling you that the revenue model is viable is far from them telling you that they're going to hop on board and foot the bill. Particularly given the rather speculative nature of the venture -if the crew dies in landing, that's a lot of lost revenue for the studios (in spite of the short term ratings spike that it will undoubtedly garner).
If Mars had running water, there should be some caves. If you can find deep enough caverns, then you could have a better chance of sustaining life.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Well there are the "non-edible parts of the plants" mentioned in the Q&A. Some sort of "paper" manufacture seems plausible.
"I've got loads of emotional and physical baggage and I don't think I should go. Given all this baggage I've got, how can anybody else possibly go there??"
Who chooses the questions? Seriously...
No sig today...
With no magnetic fields the cosmic rays / radiation will probably keep the surface quite sterile.
"Providing them with a way to produce habitable volume and energy with local materials is also high on our list, but these technologies are not 'off the shelf'. Mars One plans to send out a request for proposals to have these technologies developed."
Translation: We have no idea how to implement our ideas; we don't even know if it's physically possible to do so. We're just hoping somebody else can solve these problems before our money runs out.
Got nothing better to do here and it looks like things are going to hell in a hand basket anyway. At least there everything you do has a purpose and makes a difference. As for longevity, I've learned that everyone dies sooner or later - some much too sooner. How you live is more important than when you die.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is a STUPID idea, one way trip and all. I suppose that *somebody* would want to watch the show, after all folks watch a show about 19 (or is it 20 now?) kids.However, how long did John & Kate take to self destruct? How many seasons of survivor did we get?
I'm guessing that you'd get about 3 - 5 seasons at most and it would be done. It would be a stretch to get a year out of it because the first few years would be nothing but engineering, testing, and training which is pretty boring stuff. Even one way, this effort will take longer than 5 years of fully funded R&D and a *huge* pile of money to actually build the thing and there won't be much to watch for years.
This isn't going to work on SOOOO many levels..
" There will always be the time delay of at least three minutes, so the people on Mars would know who won a few minutes after the people on Earth."
Well, I still don't know, so obviously the Martians can't learn it yet either.
Nobody tell me it was Dale Earnhardt III and the LA Yankees, I don't want to be spoiled.
You are not writing a book! Just use the word four.
2) Can the entirety of the Earth's internet be cached on local Martian servers to provide entertainment equivalent to being on Earth?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Fifty square meters of space is utterly insufficient to grow enough food for 4 people, regardless of whether you stack "some" plants four units high. Period, end of discussion.
I'd say this plan is a long way from sufficiently baked. Much as I'd like to see it succeed, Lansdorp's response on the subject of food production makes it clear that this is, in fact, a scam.
Too bad. I'd've loved to live long enough to see a permanent colony on Mars.
Check out my novel.
I would point out that there are places on Earth that require imported food for the local population to survive. I don't mean places like Sudan. I mean a place like Hawaii (90% of food is imported).
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Waay too many basic questions are being ignored. A big one is what to do about cosmic radiation. This is interplanetary space, not low Earth orbit. And this is months of exposure, not a few days as with the moon landings. Everyone could be dying of radiation poisoning by the time they reach Mars, and the problem doesn't end upon reaching the surface. Mars has no global magnetic field, no ozone layer, no thick atmosphere.
We ought to experiment with plants on Mars before sending people. Some future unmanned probe could do that. Even before that, we ought to succeed first with a Biosphere 2 type of experiment right here on Earth. These guys want to leapfrog all these boring preliminaries and go straight to the top. It's like proposing to climb Mt. Everest with 18th century tech, before discovering whether lesser, easier peaks can be summited at all.
Life would be extremely precarious. One tiny little mistake could kill a person, or even the whole colony. Even if no one makes a mistake, ignorance could still prove fatal.
I find the thoughts on video footage surreal. That's the least of the problems faced by any proposed manned Mars mission. Makes it hard to take their notions seriously.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
This is private and non-governmental.
Screw you.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
yep and it just takes 9 months and a billion dollars to ship something to hawaii, right ?
It is difficult to tell if your misinformed or just dumb. This story is about a PRIVATE manned expedition to Mars, funded with PRIVATE money, and on PRIVATE risk. And all of that money spent is spent buying supplies from very earthly suppliers, so it's not like that money is being flung into space never to return. I've seen this argument of "oh there's people dying with diarrhea in africa, so we should not try to pursue " so many times, and it is still stupid and shortsighted.
Greenland the original colonizing land scam.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
This is about a commercial enterprise so your rant about government spending on it doesn't really make any sense at all.
But who will open their jars? Who!
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I would give them money even if I don't watch. They can have fund raisers like they do in PBS. I know is for the good of humanity so I would pay I be willing to leave all of my assets after I die for humanity to expand, and I am sure there are others that think alike.
The people and governments of the world are going to have to wake up
The Slashdotters of the world are going to have to wake up and RTFA.
I mean a place like Hawaii (90% of food is imported).
It doesn't have to be. The Hawaiian people did pretty well long before Captain Cook ever knew it existed.
But, I get your point. And Mars ain't Maui. If one to run out of food you can't just go fishing or grab a coconut off of a tree.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I wonder if someone breaks a law on Mars who do they answer to?
Cosmic rays are not electromagnetic radiation, the word "ray" in the term is a bit of a misnomer. Cosmic rays are actually particles or nuclei.
Except there's 1.3 million people here in Hawaii now... A few more than there were before Captain Cook. I hear we have enough food for about a week, then we're done.
"Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, and bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success."
Despite the ominous tone of the ad, the response was overwhelming.
Too bad the ad probably never existed.
All engineers and scientists must just look like a bunch of incompetant magicians that just can't find the right spell to you :(
Dropping within 50 km is very, VERY easy. Dropping within 2 km is likely. Landing in a 100mx100m drop zone is not out of the question. It's called guidance. It's not like we have to shoot them off from Earth and hope for the best.
This is so way super optimistic pie-in-the-sky it is not even funny. There's 50 or 100 years worth of engineering work blocked out here and a couple $100 billion in R&D, and they have 10 years and $6 billion... I guess it just shows you can convince yourself of almost anything if you try hard enough...
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Mars seems to me to be indeed "a planet too far" at this point. Give us 50 or so years of operational experience on the Moon, then it will be a lot more sensible plan.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Don't underestimate these people. They've got a huge amount of experience between them. One of them worked on wind electricity, another studied astronomy and worked at an observatory, a third one is a graphical designer, and the fourth studied business and communication. That's way more engineering knowledge than NASA had for the Apollo missions. Well, perhaps not, but at least this mission will be on facebook with gorgeous illustrations. Suck that, NASA! You didn't manage to put Neil Armstrong on facebook!
And as someone pointed out on a Dutch forum: for 6G$ you're not likely to get more than the weight of a small van in orbit around the Earth.
Perhaps the ore paranoid here are right, and it's a scam. But what idiot would fall for it?
without a cat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Red_Dwarf)
Don't forget walkways and access to individual plants.
I don't know about how you manage your greenhouse but I am always finding I have to move trays of plants in and out to get access to look after the individual plants. So reduce the area accordingly: these are growing plants to be maintained, not just cans of beans that can be stacked, stored, and pulled out when needed. I'd say quite a lot less than the maximum volume you propose.
At four people every two years, it will be a long time before Mars has 1.3 million people.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If this is a one way trip and death is in the job description can the death certificate be signed just after take off?
When can the legal wills be executed?
I'm guessing any life insurance policies are void.
Are they going to be paid? Back on earth or a mars bank account? Will they have to submit their tax returns?
If you're about to skip town, well skip the world, in a few days, what would you do? party hard? rob a few banks? rub up the local mafia mob? Eat like there's no tomorrow?
This could be one of the highlights of the TV Voting/ratings of the series, maybe all time? Have TWO teams of 4 finalists selected, one of men and one of women, then have the 2 teams compete against eachother, the voting public need be the only deciders. The ensuing fun around the globe might even be worth witnessing.
And when the next 4 are selected, all sorts of variations on this theme are possible.
What marketing potential!
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
I am rather stunned from disbelief after reading this thing. If there would be any experienced farmer on board and people from Biosphere that might seem more solid. But this whole hydroponic thing is pure nonsense. Have these people EVER grown food on their own? Especially in some closed environment? ... what type of plants are they going to use? Self-pollinator? Good luck without wind and the few available types. Insect-pollinator? Ask the Biosphere people what happened with this and some non-functional ecosystem ... ... and a lot of natural regulation from the ecosystems.
Hydroponics are extremely sensitive to contamination from bacteria, algae, insects and fungi and the nutrition solution needs to be PRODUCED. I might be completely wrong but to my knowledge there is no such thing as a device that can turn human waste into something resembling hydroponic solutions with the correct nitrogen/salt/conservative mix - and being sterile for use. Production of fertilizer in sufficient amounts is already a nightmare energy wise.
Plus
Plus 50m2 for food is ridiculous. That isn't even feeding one person. Have you ever tried levelled growing even with hydroponics? Even with hybrid plants you won't get enough in extended growth seasons. Plants that are not trees but produce fruit or vegetable die after a while and need to be replaced. If you have 4 people experts in agriculture and tons of chemicals and instruments to diagnose problems - which are going to pop up after pretty short time, humans are not sterile too after all, that is going to settle and mutate - maybe that could work. But I highly doubt it.
The problem is that people nowadays are completely detached from how difficult it is to produce food, what insane effort sufficient amounts of diverse food needs. And how vulnerable these are. And that is on earth with everything availabe in a shop including pestizides, fertilizer, pollinators
The kinds of technologies that would make a manned colony on Mars sustainable are just the kinds of things that would help out tremendously here on Earth. Also, this article is about a private mission to Mars, not a government-funded one.
It appears you haven't actually looked at their website. Some of those longer-term techs are still in progress, but if you have a read, everything else they need *already exists*. It was one of the core things they were looking for - tech that isn't fiction, but which they can actually go and buy now. Go have a look: www.mars-one.com.
I'm kinda surprised that there are a lot of "this is a scam", "this won't ever work" comments on here. Whatever happened to geeks getting excited about a cool use of science (that might - just possibly - actually work)? I'm an engineering student, and while I can see millions of things that could go wrong and wonder about their business model, I think it's brilliant - and think it could work. Let's get into space. I don't really care how, let's just do it, while we can (we are at a rare point between technological development and resource depletion where we actually have the ability to attempt this - wait too long and we'll likely miss it and, as a species, never get the chance again).
So what if it fails? So what if only 4 people make it and they die alone? At least we tried, and it might just inspire people to keep trying.
Also, wouldn't you rather have people excited about spaceships again, rather than sappy vampire teen romance? ;-) I certainly would.
Space travel! What could possibly be cooler than finally colonising another planet?
Very interesting questions. Good to see Mr. Lansdorp answering some of them. His answers leave many things unaddressed, however.
To avoid extensive re-posting, I only reference the question itself, as posted on 07-23-12.
RE: Participant Psychosis?
Shackleton's pithy, brutally honest advertisement for volunteers does indeed support the view that there will be no shortage of volunteers for this mission. However, it is not about the sheer number of volunteers, it is about their qualifications, and indeed the selection process will have to be very thorough, as Mr. Lansdorp states. There is a long, costly path needed to select those few program participants. If it is thought that they "will have pursued careers that will increase the odds of being selected for this kind of mission", already the group of potential team members has been made very small.
The HuffPo article is long on general commentary about inspiration and challenge, but short on the specifics of finding qualified applicants, and adds little to our understanding beyond Mr. Lansdorp's general assertions.
RE: What are the entertainment options like?
In theory, the nascent base will get larger every two years; still the spatial limitations on the colonists, room to swing one's arms, so to speak, will be severe for many years. This ties into the psychological issues mentioned above, and will present a difficult challenge in keeping the crews mentally healthy. The various indoor activities planned for Mars; reading, writing, painting, physical workouts, TV, and the internet, will be quite different from their Earthly equivalents due to extreme space limitations and lack of variety.
RE: Pioneers
It is quite understandable that the business plan not be subject to public scrutiny, but in general terms, it doesn't seem that selling scientific knowledge or reality TV shows will cover the costs of the mission. If the knowledge is sold to the highest bidder, it doesn't seem likely that it will be as accessible to the public as is the scientific knowledge made available by NASA and ESA, for example.
The TV show might very well develop a devoted audience. For example, the construction progress could be very interesting. If, however, the TV show focuses more on personal drama, then one has to question the nature of the participant selection process referred to above.
RE: Environmental Questions
If, before the Mars-One team should land, life is discovered on Mars, then the COPSPAR requirements are almost certain to change. Many scientists believe that it would be more important to preserve and study a second genesis ecosystem before risking contamination by humans.
RE: Space for growing food?
The questioner suggests a first order approximation of garden size as 2.3 acres (9308 m~2) Mr. Lansdorp's answer, "in total there will be about 50 m2 available for plant growth", cannot work, without being first demonstrated here on Earth, complete with peer review.
The calculation that they omit is this: How much solar energy does it take to create a calorie? How much additional solar energy does it take to set up a PV array to generate electricity for the LED's for that garden?