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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."
If you have to pay a fee to get the job -- it's a scam. Except in this case, they're not even bothering to guarantee you the job. Because it's so exciting, they need only promise you the opportunity. And then further down the road, they'll likely ask for more money, "to get further up the ladder, still".
http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/694333
Elon Musk wants to build a Mars Colony too, but he has a rocket factory (SpaceX), and several other businesses that can earn lots of money *and* supply hardware for Mars: Tesla (electric cars on Earth, electric rovers on Mars), Solar City (home roofs, and soon high efficiency cells for Earth and Mars), and the Gigafactory (batteries for vehicles *and* nighttime backup for solar panels). So his plan is a lot more feasbile than Mars One's.
The real question is where is Mars One going to get the $6 billion they estimate for their project? If they have that money, they can hire the right aerospace companies and engineers to build real hardware. But without it, they just have pretty pictures on a website, and aren't going anywhere.
And as someone who helped build the Space Station, and written a book on Space Systems Engineering ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/S... ), Mars One isn't being innovative *enough* to really bring down costs.
Obviously they didn't have SpaceX's capabilities available when they approved the Curiosity mission over a decade ago.
Having a rocket thruster that can ignite in supersonic mode is a game-changer, especially for Mars. Most people in "the business" didn't think it was possible until SpaceX proved them wrong. This is just another example of folks not realizing how much the game has changed while they weren't paying attention.
We are on the brink of massive changes in aerospace... I just hope enough people will "tune in" before it's too late.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Several reasons:
* Curiosity has almost twice the landed weight of the Viking Landers
* Rocket thrusters firing at ground level would contaminate the soil, which they wanted to analyze
* Curiosity is a rover. You either are carrying dead weight from the propulsion system, or need a roll-off ramp
* Curiosity's wheels and suspension allowed landing on rougher ground by landing on them directly. Rocket thrusters might have damaged the wheels by throwing rocks around