<i>Living there [Mars] is comparable to getting by on Antarctica, and provides similar challenges.</i><p>That right there is complete, unadulterated bullshit. The cost of getting a pound of supplies to Antarctica is several orders of magnitude cheaper than getting a pound of supplies even as far as orbit, let alone Mars. And Antarctica is a much less hostile environment (breathable atmosphere, for one).<p>That line alone tells me this isn't remotely a well-thought-out, plausible venture.
> The crew is actually going to stay and live on Mars, with the intention to remain there, for the rest of their lives.<p>Wait what? Isn't that a really important part of the problem that shouldn't be just skimmed through as a mere detail on the video? Aren't the ethical issues that would arise from this, by itself, be enough to make everything else unviable. Humans live for a long time. What if after 10 years living there, the show just didn't raise enough money. "Hey crew, you'll just have to suicide, we won't send anymore food". Just so many huge issues come to mind. With not many obvious solutions. I would be interested to hear to which solutions they have, if any.<p>edit: their incredibly short FAQ answer about ethics doesn't make me anymore hopeful. They don't touch on any of the obvious hard problems and even dare to make an absurd analogy with immigrants from Europe to the Americas:<p><a href="http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/19-faq-health/231-is-this-ethical" rel="nofollow">http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en/19-faq-health/231-is-this-ethi...</a>
Everyone is impressed at how real they're keeping it?<p>With the risks involved, and the $6 billion price tag (that will surely bloat out), there would need to be at least $50-60 billion in profit potential for rational investment.<p>Seinfeld is the top grossing show in history, at $2.7 billion.<p>Maybe they're hoping that billionaires with nothing else to spend the money on will cough up hundreds of millions to sponsor the project, just to get their name on it.<p>Either that, or they're not revealing the whole plan.
I have a hard time seeing any benefit to colonizing Mars without coupling it with a large-scale attempt at terraforming. If we're going to just put a domed colony somewhere, the moon makes far more sense.<p>I'm much more optimistic about putting more robots in space, such as Planetary Resources is working towards. As it becomes easier and cheaper to extend our virtual fingers outside our gravity well, we can eventually create places that are truly habitable for humans, and which sustainably scale.
At first I thought "wow cool, a reality show on mars sounds like an awesome idea". Then I thought about it further and wondered "What would they actually do on mars that would make people want to watch?"<p>Diary Day 662: "Today we explored another crater, the dirt was quite similar to the last 83 days. John is still with Dianne and I haven't had sex in nearly 2 years. I've read the Harry Potter series 97 times now, maybe I'll make it to 100 by the end of the year."<p>I can imagine it lasting a few months or maybe even a year, but what happens after then when viewers stop tuning in?<p>I guess by then they're hoping they'll have set up a mining expedition or maybe other tourist flights and can raise money that way.
This project is completely ridiculous. Those people completely underestimate how <i>extremely</i> difficult it is to even <i>land</i> on Mars. Nearly two-thirds of all Mars missions have failed in some way, and yet these people are convinced they can simply put humans on Mars? Right.<p>You don't have to take my word for it, though. Take a look at what they say at their own site, and see if it actually makes sense. A few examples:<p>"In addition to this, the elements needed for a viable living system are already present on Mars, so we can keep the number of launches down. For example, the location Mars One has chosen contains water ice in the ground which can be extracted through heat and used to drink, bathe with, or used to feed crops, but can also be manipulated to create oxygen. Mars even has natural sources of nitrogen, another element of the air we breathe."<p>And we will extract these resources how? We theoretically know how to build such systems, but that's not the same as actually being able to build them on Mars. Are they just going to experiment during the project, and if it doesn't work then "oops, well, I guess you're all going to die"?<p>But, most ridiculously:
"Of course most of the elements we need are not yet exactly in the form we would like, but crucially: no brand new inventions have to be conceived, designed, tested and built for the mission to become reality."<p>That's like saying we can also build a colony on Venus right now. Or Mercurius. Or Jupiter. Because we have a theoretical understanding of how to launch rockets there and how to build space colonies, and of course the technology to do both these things already exist. What these people fail to see is not that we don't have a theoretical understanding of how we <i>might</i> do all this, but that without any practical experiments in several areas AND many failed tests the chances of this project going perfectly as planned (which almost never happens to begin with) are VERY slim.<p></rant>
There was an IAMA on reddit by these guys a while back: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_mars_one_settling_humans_on_mars/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/uta10/iama_founder_of_...</a>
It certainly didn't help much in getting my hopes high.
I don't believe it. Getting to Mars with people is going to be <i>much</i> harder challenge than the moon was. This[1] was a great episode of Nova (with Neil Degrasse Tyson) exploring the research NASA has been doing to prepare for a trip to Mars.<p>1. <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/space-food.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/space-food.html</a>
A much smarter plan would be to build a settlement on the Moon, build factories which build habitats, tools and mining equipment (to extract water, air, maybe food and fuel from either the Moon or Mars) and send a couple of those to Mars from the Moon, using a electromagnetic launch system before sending any humans. One could even remotely control the lunar equipment from Earth before risking astronauts there.<p>The idea of a one-way mission is terrible.
I can't stop thinking why? Why do we want to go and live in Mars? Developing the capabilities to go there is one thing. But living there?<p>I mean we could use it as a prison. Ship prisoners off to space ;)
Ah, good reminder to reread Philip K. Dick's, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Time-Slip" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Time-Slip</a>.
They plan to launch food supplies to Mars in 2016, 7 years before sending the astronauts and 2 years before they've even scouted out where to establish a settlement.<p>I don't understand why they would send the supplies there so early. Can anyone explain this timeline to me?
The way I see it, there's three outcomes to a goal like this:<p>1. Humans never go to Mars<p>2. Humans eventually decide it's interesting enough to go to Mars out of curiosity and find a way to get there<p>3. Earth looks doomed, but there's a slim shot at saving humanity by sending some people to Mars<p>I'm kind of disappointed there isn't more interest in something like this. Let me ask you all something. If someone in 1960 told someone else "I bet we'll have a man on the moon before the decade is over", what do you think the reaction would be?<p>It's not a lack of capability that's keeping us from getting to Mars; it's that people just don't care enough.
Are there any experts who can comment (without bias) about the validity of these claims? It's quite hard to tell just from this whether or not this is a joke, or whether it's an exciting, plausible initiative.
Well.. there was a show about a reality tv show with people aboard a spaceship set to be the first to venture outside of our star system.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28TV_series%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_%28TV_series%29</a><p>Too bad only the pilot was ever aired (to my knowledge).
Here's a good idea, why not "go through" with the project, then fake the entire media spectacle.<p>You could build up the exact same media hype and have less costs! Good thing they have a team member who has "...worked for over 20 years in the graphics industry".
I doubt it. But I think it would be possible to be living on the moon in that time frame. Plus, we could be shuttling all of our garbage into space and mining the moon. Space 2029 Redo.
i don't get it why they try to make this look like something that can be done as they say.<p>it's a joke. we don't know what are the effects of spending one day on mars let alone be there for the rest of the astronauts life.
and we'll just make it a $6 billion dollar reality show out of it... oh and the astronauts, will learn how to work on mars. they better do because with 6 billions budget to get there and provide them with life support for the rest of their lives is not gonna be easy.