Mars One Delayed 2 Years, CEO Releases Video In Response To Criticism

CryoKeen writes It's interesting how different news sites spin #marsgate. From Yahoo News: "The private colonization project Mars One has pushed its planned launch of the first humans toward the Red Planet back by two years, to 2026. The delay was necessitated by a lack of investment funding, which has slowed work on a robotic precursor mission that Mars One had wanted to send toward the Red Planet in 2018, Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp said in a new video posted today... 'We had a very successful investment round in 2013 that has financed all the things that we have done up to now. And we have actually come to an agreement with a consortium of investors late last year for a much bigger round of investments. Unfortunately, the paperwork of that deal is taking much longer than we expected,' Lansdorp said in the video." This Astrowatch article is a lot more scathing and to the point: "Mars One, the Dutch company planning to send people on a one-way trip to Mars, that recently selected a group of 100 hopefuls, struggles with criticism. In a Medium story this week, Mars One finalist Joseph Roche presented multiple reasons as to why he believed the entire operation is a complete scam. In response, the company published a video Thursday in which Bas Lansdorp, CEO and Co-founder of Mars One, replies to recent criticism concerning the feasibility of Mars One's human trip to Mars. He also revealed that the mission will be delayed for two years. Roche said that the 'only way' to get selected for the next round of the Mars One candidacy process was to donate money. 'My nightmare about it is that people continue to support it and give it money and attention, and it then gets to the point where it inevitably falls on its face,' Roche told Elmo Keep for Medium."

Comments

delay

[itzly]

In other words: the scam is working nicely, and we'd like to milk this cow for another 2 years.

Re:delay

[burtosis]

Well I can think of three reasons.
1) you want to popularize reality snuff tv shows
2)You want to embezzle the funds and flee to a country with no extradition laws
3)You want to blow investor money on pseudo legal expenses like corporate bentleys and 'business trips' where the per diem includes hooker and blow expenses.

Re:delay

[jandrese]

It's a classic advance fee scam. You promise the suckers something awesome if they'll just front a bit of cash to handle processing fees and transportation fees and whatever other fees the scammers can think of. It works because after the people invest money they don't want to lose their investment and are more willing to handle further fees. In some cases they are trapped because they took out a loan with the promise of the future payout as collateral and they can't afford to pay the loan back unless the deal goes through.

Lack of funding

[wiredlogic]

The delay was necessitated by a lack of investment funding

Maybe because they don't have a rocket, a ship, a way to land, a way to ferry supplies, a way to fund those supplies, or a way to live on another planet long term. Only a fool would dump money on this adventure.

Re:Lack of funding

[burtosis]

Only a fool would dump money on this adventure.

ahh so its a perfectly viable business plan with a wide consumer base. I was worried there for a minute.

Re:Costs?

[itzly]

On one side -how do they plan to raise that amount of money?

After the selection process, the candidates will enter a "rocket" that's really a cardboard prop with hidden cameras. During the journey, they'll face some challenges that will force them vote for the next candidate to be pushed out of the airlock.

Re:Costs?

[Rei]

You know, this gets me thinking... what's really the minimum necessary for a person to stand a chance of making it to the surface of Mars alive? Let's say:

1) 150 days transit
2) Passenger remains drugged out of their gourd during the whole voyage so that they don't go crazy in the ridiculously small amount of space they're allocated, nor burn more than a minimal amount of consumables.
3) No extra radiation shielding; craft keeps its thickest end toward the sun and puts its consumables around the passenger but otherwise does nothing special
4) Landing hardware done as an exact duplicate of MSL, no re-engineering. MSL used a 4 tonne spacecraft to deliver a 900kg payload to the surface. An incredibly cramped capsule may fit that payload profile.
5) No attempt to get back or even survive for any significant length of time. Passenger has to be someone who wants to die on Mars.

Normal O2 consumption is 0,9kg/day; let's say 0,7 due to #2. Consumption of pure fat for say 1500 calories per day is 166g; let's say 300. I don't have numbers on CO2 scrubbers, let's put it at the same as O2. Let's say 3 liters (3kg) water consumption per day, 2kg recovered from the air via a chiller, 1kg lost to excretion, so 1kg total per day. Let's say 1kg other consumables per day. No complex recycling systems or anything that could seriously inflate your costs. We're at the ballpark of 3.7kg per day, so 555kg for the journey there, which doesn't need to be landed. Give them 600kg for some margin and a little time alive. These figures probably wouldn't size your spacecraft out of an affordable launch vehicles.

So yeah, if you really wanted to, I bet you could have a moderate chance of delivering a suicidal human alive but very ill to the surface of Mars to live for a short period of time for only a couple billion dollars in development + launch costs.

Who wants to sign up? ;)