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Mars One Delayed Its Mars Mission -- Again (time.com)
Mars One says its project to start a human colony on the Red Planet will be delayed by five years. The Dutch company says it will send its first crews to Mars in 2031 instead of its previous target date of 2026. From a report on Time: The venture is delaying its missions so it can raise more money, according to CEO Bas Lansdorp. "Of course the whole Mars One team would have preferred to be able to stick to the original schedule, but this new timeline significantly improves our odds of successfully achieving this mission roadmap," he said in a statement. This is far from the first time Mars One has delayed its project. Despite Lansdorp's confidence, other scientists have expressed significant doubts about the mission's feasibility.
that's all they need to get back on track
they pinky swear they won't steal it
The breakthrough of my company just needs one or two more years of funding to bring this amazing, world-changing free energy machine to market. You can be an investor too!
We are already in the 3D printing revolution, as we can all see with the 3D printed houses and 3D printed cars rolling on 3D printed solar roadways!
Mars One is being held back by the Lizard People who don't want us to discover their bases!
Because it's clearly not a resource, technological, physical, or economical problem. Since all these problems have been solved by 3D printing.
Right?
Who really expected otherwise?
Seriously, you have a better chance of starting a seastead by 2020 than of getting to Mars by 2040.
MarsOne doesn't seem to have real plans for getting there, and IMHO is just set up like Seasteading.org, as an elaborate donation/money laundering scheme with a goal just believable enough to get donation dollars while being unbelievable enough to have setbacks without getting demands for refunds.
I mean, I really thought we were only 10 years away from solving all of the problems with radiation, with cost, with transporting the quantity of supplies humans would need, solving the issues with soft landing reliably on Mars, supporting life on a planet tens of millions of miles away, medical issues and some other minor problems. Dammit man, how could I have been so wrong?
I'd like to only read news about Mars One when they /do/ do something, not when they don't do something. Especially when what they're trying to do now is raise more money.
Don't get me wrong, I hope they go to Mars, but this project seems like a massive moonshot (ahahaha) and I think I had enough of project delay updates with Duke Nukem Forever.
What a scam! Shut these fuckers down... Don't give 'em a dime, except to make a call to their lawyer..
C'mon Slashdot, you're posting some pretty crappy stories here. Put this one in the tabloid section
Oh, hell, sure - we're still going to do this thing, we just need another round of funding. I swear just a few million (billion) more and we're going to absolutely get this to fly. Right after I finish paying of the yacht.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I know they have concepts and maybe some engineering drawings but have they actually contracted out for the development of anything? There has to be some supporting equipment they could be accumulating right now, right?
I wonder if they ever considered partnering with a company like SpaceX?
I could see this going somewhere with the right mix of companies, but right now I just don't see one organization pulling it all together.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This is personally really bad for me. I was one of the people who were selected to go and was all ready and trained. I am not sure what could be the problem here, we had a good plan and website. Maybe just a temporary snag?
... so what makes anybody believe this ludicrous load of nonsense, that they're going to put people on Mars, when they can't even land a rover?
...right after the perfect practical fusion.
Once that tiny little hurdle is overcome, it's off to Mars!
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Why does this obvious scam continue to get headlines from slashdot? Or anyone else for that matter. This is nothing more than some crooked and/or delusional people preying on the credulous. Without the resources of a nation state backing the project there is absolutely no way this could possibly happen. The technology to make it happen does not (yet) exist and the organizations who are capable of developing it (read NASA and peers) aren't involved with any of this. Furthermore any credible mission to Mars will cost tens and more likely hundreds of billions of US$ to even have a prayer of working at all much less in such a ludicrously short time span.
Seriously, why does this drivel keep getting the time of day?
The instant they announced a fee to "apply" to be one of their "astronauts," anyone with half a brain could see these idiots were grifters. Of course, the other option was pie-in-the-sky delusionals, but at least that would have been honest.
I know they have concepts and maybe some engineering drawings but have they actually contracted out for the development of anything?
No. It's a scam and an obvious one. Do not take any of it seriously. It's annoying that they keep getting headlines in spite of their lies.
I could see this going somewhere with the right mix of companies, but right now I just don't see one organization pulling it all together.
Unless one or more of the bigger nation states gets involved there simply won't be adequate funding to make it happen. We're talking tens to hundreds of billions to actually pull off a mission to Mars. For profit companies aren't going to get involved because shockingly enough there is no profit in such a venture even if it were a serious endeavor, which it is not. Private funding wouldn't remotely be sufficient and governments aren't involved. The only organizations that are capable of developing the technology to make a Mars mission happen are not involved with Mars One.
And it always will be.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
It's easy to keep making promises and beg for more money. Such a project cannot be built on charity.
WHAT -- insanity I say, that the Mars gulag will remain unready for snowflake / progressive and rugrate ( Bantu/narco.MEX/Muzzi-wog ) occupation. Where are those evolutionary dead-ends supposed to go? Fuck up my salmon streams or all crash at Spike Lees hovel ??? And twis going to be soooooo much fun seeing 1/13 of those space-craft explode upon launch. Oh well, better continue the ricin injections .....
www.space.com/34351-obama-says-america-will-send-people-to-mars.html
That is completely untrue. We've been sending heavy things to Mars reasonably reliably since the late 1970s.
There is a huge difference between sending a robot the size of a car and sending a human landing party with the VAST amount of equipment they would need to survive the trip to Mars. It's like the difference between sending up a sounding rocket versus the Apollo program. You're talking orders of magnitude difference in complexity and cost.
We do NOT have the technology to send humans to Mars at this time. We don't have the life support systems, we don't have the landing craft, we don't have the radiation shielding, we don't have a return system, etc. All that could (probably) be developed with enough time and money but we're not even close to having it ready. Without a crash government program we aren't going to have it ready in the next 10-15 years either. The only thing we have the technology to do today is to send a dead human body to Mars which is a pretty useless exercise.
Of the Linux Desktop overtaking Windows...
Of the Mars One space craft liftoff...
This will be the year, I promise..... Oh, wait... NEXT year will be the year, I promise..... (lather, rinse and repeat..)
Just a guess.. Neither will happen in my lifetime.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Not entirely true, I think a private organization could go to Mars, but it would have to be a big established organization (like a Boeing, or maybe SpaceX in 10 years) who has a lot of credibility, expertise, and resources to throw behind the project.
No profit making public company can possibly go to Mars. There is no profit to be had in doing so or if there is, nobody has found it yet. If you were CEO of Boeing and you went into a board meeting and proposed going to Mars, you would be out of job 5 minutes later. It would be the shortest board meeting ever. A Mars mission is HUGELY expensive, there is no discernible profit to be had in doing so, and the risks of failure are enormous. Businesses can't do things with huge costs, minimal if any revenue, and high probability of failure.
SpaceX can only talk about Mars because they are privately held and Elon Musk effectively controls the company so the board has to indulge him. It's a vanity project for him but even they aren't seriously doing the things that would be necessary to make a Mars mission actually happen within my remaining lifespan. They have a business sending rockets into low earth orbit and still working the kinks out for that. Explain to me how they make enough money to finance even a vanity project to Mars much less do it as a profit making enterprise. Talk is cheap. Rockets to Mars aren't.
At this point it looks like their best bet is to just keep pushing the deadline for their first expedition until after NASA/China/someone else figures out how to get people to Mars. That way, someone else will already have solved the problems of developing the right landing technology + technology to keep humans alive in far away from Earth for at least a year (i.e. long enough to get to Mars, stay there a few days, and then come back).
All Mars One would have to do then is use the money they've been collecting so far to buy that technology, extend the technology to support a longer-term human presence (probably by incorporating what we have learned from the International Space Station), and then launch their first astronaut pioneers.
That's not really accurate. We DO know how to send humans to Mars.
Not live ones. If you are looking to sent a dead human to Mars then your statement is accurate.
The problem is we don't know how to do it on a budget that is remotely achievable
No, right now we don't know how to do it period. Not for any amount of money. We probably could invest several tens (hundreds maybe?) of billions of dollars to figure it out but today as I type this we do not know for certain how to pull off a manned mission to Mars. And in matter of fact until we actually do such a mission successfully we cannot say that we know how to do it because until then we don't. We didn't know how to land on the Moon until we actually landed on the moon. You have to prove you can do something to say you know how to do it. Right now we THINK we know how to get it done but that's a far cry from actually doing it.
I would love to see us standing on Mars someday but let's be realistic about where we are and what it will take to get there.
Isn't there something someone can do to shut these clowns down?
Sue them into oblivion, arrest them for false advertising, or libel or something?
You really must be a moron to believe they actually will use the money for a mission, it's never gonna happen. All they do is take a large amount as a salary and the rest is spent on mockups to attract more investors. They haven't shown any real serious stuff.
''Always ten years away'' sounds much more accurate than ''always five years away''.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Kraft Erhicke said, “If God intended man to be a space faring species he would have given them a Moon.” (found this in Paul Spudis’ 2016 book 'Value of the Moon").
mfwright@batnet.com
a company devoid of the technology and money it would take to make a manned Mars mission says the mission is delayed. Nothing was delayed, that company is not going to Mars in 2031, even a global superpower pouring hundreds of billions won't go there within two decades, technological impossibility. I'm all for colony on Mars, but that will be by USA or China and in 40+ years, that's reality.
And in other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead...
Unless one or more of the bigger nation states gets involved there simply won't be adequate funding to make it happen. We're talking tens to hundreds of billions to actually pull off a mission to Mars. For profit companies aren't going to get involved because shockingly enough there is no profit in such a venture even if it were a serious endeavor, which it is not. Private funding wouldn't remotely be sufficient and governments aren't involved. The only organizations that are capable of developing the technology to make a Mars mission happen are not involved with Mars One.
Elon has said that a manned Mars mission would cost at least $200 Billion and possibly $600 Billion. I doubt that Mars One has anything to offer Space X. Their funding is small and drying up. I doubt their engineering is anything better than Space X could come up with in a weekend. Their hype machine is probably less than Elon himself let alone a project he could start. Their idea that the cost to Mars can be magically reduced by leaving everybody there to die is a farcical nonstarter.
How about 'Mars Zero' - just a flyby like Denis Tito's _Inspiration Mars_ ? I think we have the hardware right now, even without SpaceX
Absurdly overambitious and under-resourced company revises deadline that is 10 years in the future, by 50%.
They get minor props for noticing the problem early. Which is completely null and void due to not noticing the "Absurdly overambitious and under-resourced company" part in the first place.
Expect that in 5 years they will extend the deadline by another 5 years. Unless they go bankrupt before then. I'm betting on the latter.
Why don't they attract some billionaire dollar investor, so they don't have to beg for money from everybody else?
Wouldn't common sense for traveling to other planets, start with establishing a moonbase FIRST. Work out all the bugs in your equipment/dome/support !
For a moment I was worried that SpaceX's attempt to land on Mars (without humans) was going to be delayed. Oh no, that would push it back by two years until the orbits line up again! (not that it won't probably get delayed by a cycle anyhow)
Then I realized it was those scammy Mars colonly guys that I had forgotten about.
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To get from mars to earth requires you to either ship fuel or make fuel their.
You remove that and you remove some cost.
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Why do people always say "we don't have the technology" when we clearly have it?
We clearly do NOT have the technology to send a successful manned mission to Mars today and we are in no danger of having such technology mission ready in the next 10-15 years minimum. For a non-suicide mission we currently lack radiation shielding, life support systems, a functional ship, a landing system, a return system, and a host of other mission ready systems necessary to make such a journey viable. If we had such technology ready today the discussion surrounding a manned Mars mission would be quite different.
Mars missions are not a technology problem, particular radiation and life support are solved problems.
They most certainly are not solved problems. At least not in any economically viable sense of the word. If you don't have a solution that is mission ready and can be funded for available amounts of money then you don't have a solution. Right now we don't have a radiation shielding solution that is mission ready and economically realistic. What solutions we could implement today are economically non-starters.
I agree that manned Mars missions, especially by mini companies, are unrealistic ... but it is a mere monetary and time frame problem, not a technology one.
It's a technology problem too. Don't kid yourself that there aren't any technology hurdles. I think the technology portion of the problem is the most tractable of the problems compared with the economic and political issues but it is a problem nonetheless. We don't have solutions to a lot of the technology problems with a manned mission to Mars today but we do have a pretty good idea what the solutions would look like and we've done similar things in the past. Even if we had a crash program to get boots on Mars ASAP, it would still take one or two decades minimum to work out all the technology issues and get them adequately tested and built.
First is a massive 20-10-5 billion dollar X-prize to the first three groups to successfully colonize.
$20 billion won't even be close to enough money. It certainly won't cover the cost of such a venture. $20 Billion is roughly NASA's annual budget today in 2016. It's certainly not enough to cover the cost of a colonization. Colonizing Mars will cost TRILLIONS of dollars. Probably tens or even hundreds of trillions. $20 billion wouldn't even buy you the Apollo program on an inflation adjusted basis.
Second is homesteading. There's no value in Martian real-estate right now, but in 200 years? 500? How much would companies pay to have governments recognize their property rights over a decent sized chunk of Mars? I'm not sure how markets would treat it, but property rights are very stable, I'm betting the value would be substantial.
I think you don't understand how capital markets work. The value of Mars real estate is zero and will remain so for the lifetime of anyone reading this. The possibility of it being worth substantial sums in 500 years is WAY beyond any realistic projections for a business plan. Property rights are only as stable as governments and governments are demonstrable very unstable over century long time spans. And even if they were, until we have some actual functioning colonies on Mars with a self sustaining economy and infrastructure the value of an real estate on Mars is very literally less than zero. It is a cost with no offsetting revenue.
As for funding the companies could create a consortium to spread out costs and risk.
You don't get it. No they cannot. You can't spread out risks that you cannot even quantify. Nobody is going to take on costs unless you can show them some means by which those costs can be recouped in a reasonable time frame. I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson is right that private enterprise will not and indeed cannot lead us to Mars. The risks are unknown and unquantified, the ROI is non-existent, the costs are enormous and unquantified, the technology to go there doesn't yet exist and nobody knows when it will exist, and the likelihood of failure is high. No private company can take a risk like that. If one did they would be in bankruptcy faster than you could say "shareholder lawsuit".
To get from mars to earth requires you to either ship fuel or make fuel their.
You remove that and you remove some cost.
A trivial cost in the total cost of such a venture and much less than the extra materials they'd have to take to make an attempt at a self sustaining colony. the way things are shaping up now, they (Space X, as those are the only people seriously looking at going to Mars) will test their landing craft and need to do so to make sure they can land and do it where they want. One of these will contain the apparatus to collect the fuel from the Martian air and prove that it will work before humans ever leave for Mars. Their return fuel will probably be waiting for them when they get there.
And you are wrong on all regards anyway. When the ISS can support half a dozen astronauts for month, then we obviously have the life support system.
The life support systems for the ISS are different than those for a trip to Mars. We understand basically how to go about it but that's a far cry from actually building a working one that is ready for a mission to Mars. We've never built one designed to survive and perform outside of the Earth's magnetic shield for more than a few days. (The moon is inside the Earths magnetic tail for a significant portion of every month) Though it sounds like a tautology you don't know if you can do something until you actually do it. We haven't done it and we haven't even built the prototypes yet. We just have some technology that we know will go into the prototypes.
A ship is the least problem ... and the return trip only requires a ship in orbit of Mars and a landing/relaunch system.
Oh is that all? Well NASA should be able to whip that up in by Christmas. Did you actually say that out loud? You should because it's an absurd statement. That isn't a trivial either from an engineering or an economic standpoint. It took us the better part of a decade on a huge crash budget to build an incredibly flimsy lunar lander for a far easier and shorter mission. A Mars lander is a MUCH tougher engineering challenge. Mars is farther away, has a much stronger gravity well, has an actual atmosphere, cannot be communicated with in real time, etc. Those are all problems that can (probably) be solved but we don't have the solutions today and it will take a decade or more plus a huge dedicated budget to make it happen.
And radiation shielding is super simple: put the water tank and other stuff between the crew and the sun ... done.
The radiation shielding isn't that simple at all. You are misinformed. People smarter and better informed than either of us have looked at this problem closely. There are two major sources of radiation of consider and the solar wind is actually the less dangerous of the two as it mostly can be shielded by the hull of the craft itself with materials we have access to today. The other is galactic cosmic rays from our galaxy which comes from all directions, not just the sun. So you can't just shield in the direction of the sun. So you need omnidirectional shielding and it needs to be light weight to be practical and affordable.
Do you have the foggiest idea how much it would cost to get that much water just into low earth orbit much less move it to Mars? Even for a the smallest imaginable spacecraft (far smaller than ideal) we're talking many tens of billions of dollars just to get the water into low earth orbit. But then you have to also launch the propellant and the now bigger ship to move that huge mass to Mars which hugely increases the cost. NASA has looked at this and the cost of doing it is economically prohibitive. So like I said, any solutions available to us today are economically unviable. We need a solution that is light weight and ideally not bulky. Water is not a practical solution.
As I mentioned in my other post: we lack know how. We don't know why so many landings are failing
We know perfectly well why the missions failed in almost every case. What you are failing to appreciate is the difficulty of actually achieving the missions with high reliability. The engineering involved is really really hard even with the best resources and smartest people. Failure is not only an option, it's almost inevitable.