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Mars One Selects Second Round Candidate Astronauts
First time accepted submitter techfilz writes "The Mars One Project has selected 1058 second round candidates out of more than 200 000 applicants from over 140 countries. There are another two selection rounds to go before the lucky few get a one way trip to Mars. Starting in 2018, four astronauts will leave for Mars every two years to begin a human settlement partly funded by crowdsourcing and a reality TV show."
From TFIndiegogo: "This 2018 mission will be the first in preparation for human landing. The first Mars One crew is scheduled to land in 2025, with additional crew landing every two years. Before that, Mars One will have established a habitable, sustainable outpost via multiple missions scheduled between 2018 and 2022."
They are not going to be sending people starting in 2018. The 2018 trip, if it actually happens, will be an unmanned demonstration flight. I'm not sure how realistic the whole idea is but I'll wait to see if they actually do that unmanned trip before getting excited about Mars One.
According to the Mars One website, the first crews leave in 2024. As in *not* 2018
http://www.mars-one.com/mission/roadmap/2024
Lansdorp himself is a successful entrepreneur, here is a ted talk about his last company. He sold his stake and has been using the profit he made there to get Mars One off the ground for the past 3 years.
Among the people supporting them are:
- Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Prize winning Theoretical Physicist
- Dr. Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society
- Terry Gamber, worked on the lander designs for the Viking mission
- A very large number of experienced people (see their website Advisers, ambassadors)
They don't plan to develop much of the technology themselves, they're planning to buy it from other companies mostly such as SpaceX. Most of this technology exists already. They have written statements of the companies that they are willing and able to supply these things.
List of the technology they want to use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One#Technology
The total cost is estimated at $6 billion. Technology has come a long way, this combined with the privatization of space has caused costs to drop significantly. The falcon heavy for example costs only $77-135M to launch (2013).
They plan to get this through sponsorship deals. They're going to broadcast the entire thing on TV. Which makes sense, the olympics receives 6 billion dollars for 1 billion viewers. The moonlanding in 1969 had 500 million viewers. The population of the earth was only 3,5 billion back then and people weren't as well connected as they are now. So imagine how many viewers a colony on Mars would get?
No one says it's guaranteed that they will succeed, but i think they should try, and we should support it.
More information can be found on their website and IndieGoGo campaign:
http://www.mars-one.com/
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mars-one-first-private-mars-mission-in-2018
The campaign is just to help pay for the Lockheed Martin study and to convince sponsors there is enough interest. I have donated myself, and advise people who think space exploration is important to do the same. It's risky, but it's high impact.
It was autographed postal covers, actually.
http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-armstrong-couldnt-afford-life-insurance-so-this-would-have-taken-care-of-his-family-if-he-died-2012-8