Mars One CEO Insists, Our Mars Colonization Plan Is Feasible

szotz writes: Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp has a bizarre definition of the word "plan". Last week he debated two MIT aerospace engineers who were co-authors on a report that said that astronauts would suffocate on Mars if they tried to grow their own food with existing tech. The question on the table: Is the Mars One plan feasible? And the answer seemed to be "it depends on what your definition of a plan is". The stated plan is to send the first humans to Mars for $6 billion by 2027 (twice delayed already). Lansdorp admits they probably won't stick to that schedule or that budget, but that has nothing to do with whether they're going or not. IEEE Spectrum has a write-up of the debate and a link to the MIT team's presentation. It seems the company's looking for $15 million now to fund--you guessed it--more studies.

Comments

Moon Zero?

[zamboni1138]

Can someone please remind me why going back to the Moon and putting up some kind of base there isn't the next step?

I'm all for Humans expanding out into our solar system, but shouldn't we go for extended camping trips in our own backyard before we take the kids on the long haul trip to Wally World?

Re:Moon Zero?

[phantomfive]

A moon base would be expensive, difficult, and wouldn't really help much for a trip to Mars. Landing on the moon first means you need to escape one more gravity well, more fuel, etc.

But you don't have to agree with me, some people have proposed a moon base on the way to Mars. Most of these proposals (including Mars One) have more to do with manipulating people on earth than they do about actually getting to Mars.

Re:Moon Zero?

[techno-vampire]

Building a Moon Base and making it self sufficient would be much easier than doing so on Mars. If nothing else, the Moon's only a few days away from Earth, so that emergency supplies could be brought in much more quickly. That means that we'd be able to learn how to construct and maintain a closed ecology without being forced to get everything absolutely right the first time. Then, once we've done that, doing it again on Mars would be much simpler because we'd know ahead of time what we needed to take and what we didn't.

Re:Moon Zero?

[Wycliffe]

Building a Moon Base and making it self sufficient would be much easier than doing so on Mars. If nothing else, the Moon's only a few days away from Earth, so that emergency supplies could be brought in much more quickly. That means that we'd be able to learn how to construct and maintain a closed ecology without being forced to get everything absolutely right the first time. Then, once we've done that, doing it again on Mars would be much simpler because we'd know ahead of time what we needed to take and what we didn't.

Although I don't disagree with your assessment, the same assessment could be made for doing a "test run" on earth. Antarctica is probably closer to the conditions found on mars than the moon is. It seems like it would make the most sense to set up a closed ecology in Antarctica or some place similar first and test everything out there first. An underwater habitat would also be a good option but would most likely be a different construction that what would work best on mars. A lightweight positive pressure dome that can withstand extreme cold would probably work best on mars. You could simulate this easily in Antarctica with a dome of 2psi instead of 1psi so you could see how it all worked for a fraction of the cost of mars or the moon. Growing plants in this dome and any other tests while monitoring co2 levels and other living conditions. I have a hard time taking any country or organization serious that plans on sending a manned mission to mars if they don't also have a plan to do a test run first at one of the two poles and to my knowledge no one has any plans like this so my only conclusion is that no one is seriously planning on trying to send humans to another planet anytime soon.

Re:Moon Zero?

[DerekLyons]

Not really - the environments are simply too different, and thus there is virtually nothing common in the equipment. Exploration training can be conducted much more cheaply on Earth, and logistics and planning training much more cheaply in LEO.

Re:Moon Zero?

[Blaskowicz]

Moon is even worse than Mars, with more radiation due to the inverse square law, no CO2 to harvest from, worse lack of gravity.
We should do nothing at all. Better to spend on more useful things such as another billion per year on nuclear fusion, or water treatment plants here on Earth.

It's Entirely Feasible

[Fire_Wraith]

They have a very basic plan, that goes something like this:

Step 1: Raise Lots of Money.
Step 2: ???????
Step 3: Profit!

Re:It's Entirely Feasible

[billstewart]

You need Step 2. so that you can sucker people into helping you with Step 1.

Meanwhile, we'll see economically viable seasteading before we see a viable Mars project, and seasteading systems follow a similar financial plan.

Re:not fucking close

[FatdogHaiku]

15 million could be way too much or barely enough. Are these studies solely focused on theoretical and simulations, or are they actually building and testing in the real world?

My guess would be: "Not even fucking close to enough".

They need a fully manned mockup, for the ship showing that self contained environment would even work for the duration of the trip.

Then they need to facilities to demonstrate that after that trip they can set up facilities that will allow them to even survive.

If you want to reference the scale of the operation for the simulation, just look at the some analysis of what it would have taken to fake the moon landing back in the 60s, then scale that up to several years duration.

So... Space Biosphere Ventures, part deux?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

Ecosystems are *Really* *Hard*

[billstewart]

Rockets are hard, but they're just physics and chemistry, which are the easy parts.

We don't have a clue how to build an ecosystem that's capable of supporting human life for extended periods of time without frequent restocking from outside. Biosphere I/II cheated, and even then couldn't sustain themselves. The ISS gets its food and spare oxygen from down home, and only recently even started recycling urine to contribute to its water supply. We don't know how to make real dirt on mars, or grow enough plants long-term without it, we don't even really know all the micronutrients humans need, much less how to produce them in some compact yeast-reactor since we probably won't do a great job growing them.

Until we've got a Mars colony clone running sustainably in a sealed can at the South Pole, it's not worth building a full-scale one in a space station or on the Moon, which are reasonably easy to resupply from Earth if something's going wrong. Yes, it's easier to do on Mars, where there's at least a bit of carbon dioxide and some minerals and maybe some water, but there's essentially no margin for error.

Re:Ecosystems are *Really* *Hard*

[captainpanic]

You could of course build an ecosystem, and manually adjust it when it goes off course.

With a bunch of solar panels you can create extra oxygen or clean water when needed.
If some plants or organisms grow too fast, you can just kill them or cut them down.

To create an ecosystem that is entirely self sufficient and stable is beyond our capabilities. And actually, it is very likely that ecosystems are not stable at a small scale. But the entire earth is such a big buffer that it can average out everything. This averaging out must be done artificially in smaller systems.

Re:Ecosystems are *Really* *Hard*

[captainpanic]

That's what Biosphere 2 tried to do. It didn't work.

No.
Biosphere 2 tried to be entirely self-sufficient in oxygen, and only pumped it into the system when it dropped below 14.5%.

What I suggest is that you aid the oxygen (and CO2) concentrations with methods that rely on chemical engineers, not plants. Plants should be used in a space colony for producing food, not oxygen. Our human-made solar panels can convert sunlight into electricity at well over 20% efficiency, and then into oxygen at an efficiency well over 50%. Eeven in a pessimistic scenario, we can therefore use at least 10% of the incoming sunlight to make oxygen. Plants achieve a measly 1% or less.

So, there are reasons of efficiency as well as process control to do this by a process rather than "nature"...

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:not fucking close

[Elad Alon]

*wants