MIT Study Finds Fault With Mars One Colony Concept

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MIT Study Finds Fault With Mars One Colony Concept

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 9, 2014 @12:03AM from the no-mars-for-you dept.

MarkWhittington writes The Mars One project created a great deal of fanfare when it was first announced in 2012. The project, based in Holland, aspires to build a colony on Mars with the first uncrewed flight taking place in 2018 and the first colonists setting forth around 2024. The idea is that the colonists would go to Mars to stay, slowly building up the colony in four-person increments every 26-month launch window. However, Space Policy Online on Tuesday reported that an independent study conducted by MIT has poured cold water on the Mars colony idea. The MIT team consisting of engineering students had to make a number of assumptions based on public sources since the Mars One concept lacks a great many technical details. The study made the bottom line conclusion that the Mars One project is overly optimistic at best and unworkable at worst. The concept is "unsustainable" given the current state of technology and the aggressive schedule that the Mars One project has presented.

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Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 00:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Antarctica is the closest environment to Mars that we have. Maybe we should try to get a self sustainable colony there using the same materials we would send to Mars?
1. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by alex67500 · 2014-10-09 00:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Except there's oxygen and water in Antarctica, and those would presumably be some of the biggest challenges.
2. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Somebody+Is+Using+My · 2014-10-09 01:25 · Score: 2
  
  If the goal were to simulate and test the feasibility of a long-term Martian outpost, that shouldn't be too hard to replicate. Mars has the necessary elements, just not as easily accessible as on Earth.
  Create an isolated, pressurized base where the only source of oxygen comes from internal systems, not outside. Place a "factory" by the outpost that pulls in water from the environment at the same rate as it would on Mars (obviously it would discard most of it); crack some of the water to get the necessary oxygen. You are now limited to surviving from canned air, just like Martian explorers.
  The bonus is that if there is a catastrophic failure of the systems during the test, everyone doesn't immediately die; they can just open the windows.
  Harder to test would be the problems caused by low gravity, lower atmospheric pressure and increased radiation. Well, for the latter I guess we could just open the ozone hole for them again ;-)
3. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Rei · 2014-10-09 02:01 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  And how do you replace the drill bits? How do you keep your drilling machine moving - are you making all of its its consumable / wearable parts? How do you get the materials to patch leaks in your pipes as they arise, fix your broken valves, fix your pumps, and a whole host of other issues? How do you produce the power to melt the ice in a sustainable manner? If its nuclear, how do you refine the fuel? If it's solar cells, how do you make them to replace them when they break? If it's heliostats, how do you make the control electronics and the motors?
  And for every one of those things, how do you make the raw materials for them, and the hardware that makes it. And for each of those raw materials, how do you make its raw materials and the hardware that makes it? And for each piece of hardware... you get the picture. Modern human technology is built on IMMENSELY large intermeshed technology trees. Sure, with a huge multi-hundred-billion dollar research project to compress it down you might be able to bring it down to say 1% of its materials / parts, but it's still going to be a massive technology tree.
  And of course, you have to find all of the base elements on Mars, in quantities that can justify mining. And of course they're not going to all be next to each other, so better get started on your highly efficient planet-wide transportation system.
  And yes, efficiency really, really matters, every step of the way. If your solution to something is to use some Super Universal Plasma Centrifuge Refiner to separate out elements from ore and some Super Universal Molecular Assembler to make whatever chemical you need at a rate of a few grams an hour, and some Super Universal 3d Printer to print out whatever pieces of whatever spare part of whatever type every few days, and a Super Universal Assembler of robot arms that can put anything together, and to feed this whole chain you've got the planetary-wide mining and transportation system and extensive power and consumables needs and part wear, then you're on an irreversible downward slope. And the equation gets way harder once you throw humans into the equation because their needs are just so great. The simple fact is, you not only have to reproduce Earth's tech trees, but you need to do it efficiently.
  The scale of the challenge of true indepence from Earth is such that I really have trouble envisioning achieving anything even close in the next several hundred years. Now, spare part imports and the like, while producing your own food, water, oxygen, and maybe a couple types of bulk construction materials cast into a couple commonly needed standardized forms? That may be more acheivable. But you're still going to need heavy rockets shooting up parts and hard-to-produce raw materials to you at regular intervals, or your "colony" will enter an irreversible downward slope, and "human willpower" from the doomed colonists isn't going to conjure up, say, a couple tons of neodymium or a self-sustaining CPU manufacturing facility.
  
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4. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Rei · 2014-10-09 02:10 · Score: 2
  
  It should also be pointed out that most people respond to such criticisms by saying "But past explorers on Earth did it"! The thing is, humans are adapted to live on Earth. In some locations you don't need any technology whatsoever to live. On most others, usually the minimum is is no more complicated than something along the lines of the ability to make rudimentary clothing and and make some variety of handmade weapon or trap.
  Advancing technology increases one's odds of survival, increases an area's carrying capacity, and vastly increases comfort, but ultimately it comes down to, this is the planet you evolved to live on. If you want to live off planet, though, you must use modern technology. You can't just pop on over there and bootstrap it. And if you want to make use of modern technology, well, you have to pay the price to produce it: unimaginably vast mining, refining, production, and transportation chains. Sorry, but that's what modern technology is built upon.
  
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5. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Wycliffe · 2014-10-09 02:36 · Score: 2
  
  Except there's oxygen and water in Antarctica, and those would presumably be some of the biggest challenges.
  So it should be easy. We should require anyone who wants to move to mars to spend 5 years in antartica.
  Antartica is a cake walk compared to mars. My guess is that a majority of those people wouldn't make it
  five years and might reconsider their desire to go to mars.
6. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Wycliffe · 2014-10-09 02:43 · Score: 2
  
  Harder to test would be the problems caused by low gravity, lower atmospheric pressure and increased radiation. Well, for the latter I guess we could just open the ozone hole for them again ;-)
  Low atmospheric pressure would be easy enough to test with a (de)pressurized base on earth but then again on mars presumably you could
  pressurize the colony to the same pressure as earth.
  Increased radiation is also easy enough to test if you really wanted to. There are plenty of sources of radiation from tanning beds to radon to
  radioactive waste. We have already done plenty of those experiments (intentionally or unintentionally) on earth and pretty much know the
  outcome of those.
7. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by CrimsonAvenger · 2014-10-09 02:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  We should require anyone who wants to move to mars to spend 5 years in antartica. Antartica is a cake walk compared to mars.
  Even better idea: if someone wants to go to Mars, we let them.
  Hell, it's not like it's any skin off your nose if someone goes to Mars, unless they're expecting you to pay for it.
  
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  "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
8. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Katatsumuri · 2014-10-09 03:19 · Score: 2
  
  Great post. I would only like to emphasize that we don't have to build a 100% self-sustaining colony from the first launch, and that a Mars base is not a closed environment. So, two comforting factors:
  1. Importing even only a few small key components (like CPUs or nuclear fuel) can cut a huge part of that tech tree you mentioned, until the local capabilities are improved.
  2. We still have a whole huge planet there. It may not have all the same resources we have on Earth, so optimal technological processes may differ, but once you start leveraging local resources at large scale, some inputs may become really cheap and solve parts of your tech tree in other ways than it is currently done on Earth.
  Learning how to solve this bootstrapping problem will be one of top benefits we get from this project.
9. Re:Practice colony in Antarctica first? by Kjella · 2014-10-09 05:19 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  And of course they're not going to all be next to each other, so better get started on your highly efficient planet-wide transportation system. (...) doomed colonists isn't going to conjure up, say, a couple tons of neodymium or a self-sustaining CPU manufacturing facility.
  Just remember that a lot of that is due to economic efficiency, not because the resources aren't available locally or because there weren't other material choices or simpler technology that would have gotten the job done. You don't need to ship 14nm CPU process technology, if you could replicate the 3200nm, ~20k transistor technology of 1978 you'd have an 8086 chip that is still a decade more advanced technology than what got us to the moon. Instead of neodymium you could probably use a gas laser or iron magnet for most applications, using only common elements. When we look at how we could build a Mars outpost using our most advanced technology and materials it's from our perspective here on Earth where the sourcing and manufacturing is cheap and easily available while the delivery is extremely expensive. If you flip that around to say what's the lowest tech, most easily sourced and versatile alternative they could do locally it might turn out that the must-have part of our tech tree isn't that big after all.
  
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"Finds Fault" is faulty reporting by Martin+Spamer · 2014-10-09 00:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is how good science is supposed to work, peer review to find faults and ongoing refinement until certainty is attained.
If this was not a challenge it would not be Science.
1. Re:"Finds Fault" is faulty reporting by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 00:19 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Mars One was the furthest thing from science as possible. It was a religious event.
2. Re:"Finds Fault" is faulty reporting by Mr+D+from+63 · 2014-10-09 00:25 · Score: 2
  
  Of course, just because it is challenged, doesn't mean it is science.
3. Re:"Finds Fault" is faulty reporting by itzly · 2014-10-09 00:53 · Score: 2
  
  The total lack of design details should give you a hint.
4. Re:"Finds Fault" is faulty reporting by hey! · 2014-10-09 04:34 · Score: 2
  
  Except this is engineering, not science.
  Engineering is by inclination more conservative than science. That's because the failure of an engineering project is more catastrophic than the failure of a hypothesis, which after all is a result. But ultimately, after the engineer has done all he could to resolve competing priorities of cost, schedule, safety etc., it's whoever is bankrolling a project that decides to pull the trigger. The Apollo program was incredibly dangerous; more money and time might have mitigated that, but they were on a hard deadline to get to the moon by the end of the decade and were already spending an almost unthinkable fraction of the nation's GDP (0.8%) to do it. So they went ahead anyway. They lost three men on the ground and of the 33 they sent into space came within a whisker of killing five of them: all three on Apollo 13, and the LEM crew on Apollo 11 who almost ran out of fuel looking for a safe landing spot. And while you might point out that the Apollo 11 LEM crew still had 25 seconds of fuel left when they touched down, compare that to the margin of safety we set for aircraft, which can still glide if they lose engines.
  While I agree broadly with the conclusion of the MIT critique, what I'm suggesting is that the engineering enterprise might have a degree of freedom they may not have considered, which is a willingness to take high levels of human casualties. The degree to which we value human life is a recent innovation. In the 1830s, trading ships began traveling between New England and California. That meant crossing Cape Horn in the winter, one way or another, and the casualty rates were appalling by modern standards. Sailors were routinely swept off the deck or fell from ice caked rigging to near instant death in freezing waters. But this was viewed as an acceptable price to pay in order to supply the New England shoe factories with cheaper leather.
  While I don't think the proposed schedule is at all feasible, just from the time it will take to decide to *do* this thing, we might not necessarily have to wait until all the safety concerns are addressed to contemporary standards for things like ships and aircraft. Of course I wouldn't dream of boarding a ship to Mars unless I was 99% certain of surviving to death by old age, but some people might be happy to do it with 50%, or even less. Of course populating the mission with the wing suit contingent might have other unexpected effects...
  
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5. Re:"Finds Fault" is faulty reporting by tchuladdiass · 2014-10-09 08:52 · Score: 2
  
  That 25 seconds of fuel was landing fuel. If they ran out before landing, they would have pushed the abort button and shot back into orbit with the takeoff fuel allocation. Now I don't know if this was automatic, or if the launch fuel physically separated (to absolutely prevent using it for landing), so that could have been a factor also.
Something More Modest by Egg+Sniper · 2014-10-09 00:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

You know, the Moon's right there (*looking around briefly*), somewhere. The same template could be applied to establishing an observatory on either of the poles in one of those nice, permanently shady craters. It would be a lot cheaper, a lot safer and arguably add a great deal more to science. Is the Moon no longer sexy enough to capture people's imagination?
1. Re:Something More Modest by AC-x · 2014-10-09 01:05 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Then we found out about the 450C sulfuric acid clouds, the molten tin lakes and the almost solid atmosphere...
  It's pretty nice at 50km up though...
While I will agree the Mars One Concept... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 00:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

probably is too optimistic, I truly call into question the opinion that we couldn't make a colony on Mars work with our current technology. Especially if we went nuclear for the initial energy supply it should be possible to put together a ship, or series of ships to land all the necessary supplies to produce a subterrainian habitat suitable for a small human colony, as well as enough supplies and technology to allow them to manufacture the rest once they are there (minus perhaps circuitry and other 'advanced tech' that requires processes that would waste/contaminate large quantities of water and other limited resources.) The biggest issue with such a colony is the simple fact that any failure would require at minimum months to get support/rescue personnel there. In such a situation, running out of anything necessary for their survival would likely mean death unless a resupply was already en-route.
That said, I hope either a non-profit or another non-corporate/non-nationalist group jumpstarts intrasystem colonization, before it gets hoarded by the large governments/corporations people will be fleeing to space to avoid.
To quote Sir Arthur Clarke... by Katatsumuri · 2014-10-09 00:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Granted, this study is supposedly more than a one man's rant, but I'm afraid that the room for assumptions is too big to guarantee an unbiased conclusion.
It is now Mars One team's move to provide a good rebuttal. So far, Bas Lansdorp's response is inadequate:

...while he welcomed the students' analysis, his company does not have time to respond to all the questions it receives from students and "the lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions."
1. Re:To quote Sir Arthur Clarke... by ColdWetDog · 2014-10-09 03:36 · Score: 2
  
  Romanes eunt domus
  
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  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Too much oxygen? by HangingChad · 2014-10-09 00:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

“If crops grown on Mars are the only food source, they will ‘produce unsafe oxygen levels in the habitat’ resulting in the first crew fatality after about 68 days due to ‘suffocation from too low an oxygen partial pressure within the environment,’ the consequence of a complex series of events stemming from overproduction of oxygen by the plants.
It seems like an over-production of oxygen on a planet with an abundance of atmospheric CO2 would be a solvable problem. Hasn't this been faced by every grow experiment ever performed in space?
One of the criticisms of the astronauts in the mood landing program was that we quit just as we were getting good at it. Right now we're not even working at developing long-duration space missions. We're not going to solve the problems until we start putting experiments and people up there to start working the bugs out.

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Something More Modest by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 00:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

While its much easier to get to the moon, it doesn't provide nearly the resources or environment that Mars would. The moon has wild (and long) temperature swings, a very long day/night cycle, no atmosphere & limited resources. Mars has some atmosphere, a more stable (if cold) temperature & a eartlylike day/night cycle. For example a greenhouse, on the moon it would require a LOT of support equipment, lighting for the long lunar night, significant power generation/storage, an large heating/cooling system, atmosphere, soil, etc. Whereas on Mars you effectively need a (robust) inflatable greenhouse, a space heater with an associated power source, some organics to mix with local soil and some seeds.
not Holland by CAPSLOCK2000 · 2014-10-09 01:01 · Score: 2

The country is called "The Netherlands", not "Holland".
Mars One is a TV-show by CAPSLOCK2000 · 2014-10-09 01:09 · Score: 5, Informative

Mars One is a commercial TV-show. The goal is to make money for the producers. The entire project is financed by making television about the endeavor. Actually reaching Mars and building a sustainable colony there are secondary goals. The project can be a succes without ever launching a single rocket, as long as people are willing to pay for the show that is produced around it.
Although I'm a bit cynical about the probability of reaching Mars I think the idea of financing a spacemission by selling TV is pure genious. The landing on the moon is one the highlights of 20th-century television. If so many people want to see it there must be an opportunity to make money.
Re:S[pace colonisation by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-09 01:10 · Score: 2

"Unsustainable" in the case of a Mars colony means "you run out of supplies and die when the earth based supplier stops delivering." Part of that is just that self-sustaining human-supporting ecosystems are a hard problem. Your conjecture that it's an impossible problem is hard to validate. Maybe you're right, but how are we supposed to tell that?
Re:Not just MIT by gcnaddict · 2014-10-09 01:25 · Score: 3, Funny

He's delivered more than you. :)

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Unreputable? by frostfreek · 2014-10-09 01:34 · Score: 3, Interesting
The article itself seems to be valid enough... but then, at the bottom, there are the following "You May Like" items:
- NASA caught deleting UFO photos from its website
- UFO flies over NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover
- Astronomer discovers animal life form on Mars from NASA images
- UFO: NASA reveals Biblical-like Spacecraft
With all that BS at the bottom, it casts doubt in my mind on the actual article.
Re:S[pace colonisation by Rei · 2014-10-09 01:39 · Score: 3, Funny

Thetproblemrwithespaceacolonizationdisiyoutcan'
There's much better ways to colonize the written word than spaces. Try page margins, there's lots of room and they don't interfere as much with legibility.

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You people make me envy the deaf and the blind!
Re:Not just MIT by JeffAtl · 2014-10-09 01:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

To be fair, Musk most likely realizes that societies tend to need a "big idea" to focus on long term investments.
Re:Low pressure pure O2 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 02:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

Their issue was the pure oxygen at sea level pressure.
pure oxygen at 1/5 pressure is still a high density compared to sea level pressure of 15 lbs / sqIn.
Something closer to 1 lb / sqIn would be the right density to prevent any flash up and provide our normal Oxy saturation provided you have a way to balance or remove CO2 from the container.
Do read "How to colonize the Galaxy in 8 easy Steps."
It's still relevant today even with the changes in technology in the last 20 years.
Re:S[pace colonisation by ray-auch · 2014-10-09 02:11 · Score: 3, Funny

Try page margins, there's lots of room and they don't interfere as much with legibility.
Tried that, I had a great proof of this colonization concept, but this margin was too small to contain it...
Re:S[pace colonisation by torsmo · 2014-10-09 03:01 · Score: 2

self-sustaining human-supporting ecosystems are a hard problem
So, wouldn't it be prudent to set-up such an environment here on earth, run tests with human inhabitants, and then carry over that experience into building a Mars colony?
Re:Not just MIT by Ksevio · 2014-10-09 03:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well he did deliver easy online payment, electric cars, and a space program, so that's a pretty good track record
Re:S[pace colonisation by Sqreater · 2014-10-09 04:03 · Score: 2

"Unsustainable" in the case of a Mars colony means "you run out of supplies and die when the earth based supplier stops delivering." Part of that is just that self-sustaining human-supporting ecosystems are a hard problem. Your conjecture that it's an impossible problem is hard to validate. Maybe you're right, but how are we supposed to tell that?
It is up to you to prove (your "validate") that self-sustaining colonies anywhere outside the Earth are possible. You prove the positive, not the negative. Otherwise we'd have to prove there are no pink polka dotted elephants hiding on the far side of the moon.

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E Proelio Veritas.
Re:Not Just Mars One by WrongMonkey · 2014-10-09 04:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

The only assumption is that the colonization would be done with CURRENT technologies. The Mars Colonial Transporter, algae or bacteria as primary food source: these are still all on the drawing board, at best. Even the Falcon Heavy is a still in development.
The big problem is all the rocket jocks think that getting to Mars is hard part and they have the idea that since biology and ecology are "soft" sciences that those are just details that will work themselves out. Until someone starts a long term self-sufficient colony on someplace like Antarctica, its really hard to take an Mars colonization plan seriously.
Partial pressure by Immerman · 2014-10-09 12:54 · Score: 2

Nope, wrong again, you're really not very good at this game. I'd suggest at least double-checking Wikipedia before you try to impress others with your knowledge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Partial pressure has nothing specifically to do with humans, it's simply the fraction of the total pressure attributable to the gas in question - basically the pressure you would have if you magically removed all other gases from the volume in question. And it works out to be total pressure times the percentage of total mass attributable to the gas in question. At sea-level the partial pressure of oxygen is 21% * 1013mbar = 212mbar. Human lungs don't really care much what else is in the air (as long as it's inert), and we can breathe just fine if you remove all the other gases and put us in a pure oxygen environment at 212mbar, that used to be the normal procedure for spacecraft before the Apollo disaster (which happened during a test run on Earth, where the capsule was running a pure oxygen environment at atmospheric pressure, or 5x the normal partial pressure of oxygen.)
Theoretically we could even survive at 100mbar of pure oxygen (equivalent to 1/2 atmosphere pressure with a normal air mixture - or high enough altitude that you'll probably want a few weeks or even months to acclimate before exerting yourself), but at that pressure the boiling point of water is getting perilously close to body temperature, which could unhealthy consequences if you should run a fever.
As for fire hazard I'll freely admit I'm not well informed - but what I can find suggests that it's primarily the partial pressure which is a problem - that is to say the danger is related to the number of oxygen molecules within a given volume, and isn't dramatically affected by the presence or absence of inert gases.

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