Mars One, which offered 1-way trips to Mars, declared bankrupt

One indication that no one is even remotely ready to think seriously about colonizing Mars (including Space X): There are vast tracts of uninhabited land on earth, notably in the American West. Colonizing those would be vastly easier than colonizing Mars, and yet no one is even talking about that. A self-sustaining colony in the middle of the Nevada desert that was able to get by with <i>no</i> outside help for a few years would be about 1% as hard as colonizing Mars, and yet no one has done it, and no one AFAIK is planning to do it. This to me is the smoking gun that no one is really taking Mars colonization seriously. Everyone is caught up in the sexiness and glamour and no one wants to get down in the dirt and solve the really hard problems of how humans are actually going to survive when they are totally isolated from civilization for years.<p>Yes, I know about the HI-SEAS project. That was not isolated nor self-sustaining, and it only lasted 8 months.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;mars-simulation-hi-seas-nasa-hawaii&#x2F;553532&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;mars-sim...</a><p>That&#x27;s actually not even the sort of thing I&#x27;m talking about. Forget simulating Mars. I want to see someone just colonize an uninhabited part of <i>Earth</i> without relying on help from the outside without any other constraints. Until we can do <i>that</i>, Mars is hopeless.

Well, that&#x27;s no surprise. Their plan was essentially to hold a televised execution while lacking the budget to build the scaffold.<p>Here&#x27;s a technical assessment of the viability of their plan: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scienceblogs.com&#x2F;startswithabang&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;18&#x2F;ask-ethan-20-is-the-mars-one-crew-doomed" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scienceblogs.com&#x2F;startswithabang&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;18&#x2F;ask-etha...</a>

I know that for everyone here, it was obvious from the start that Mars One was never going to fly. What really gets my goat is the utter gullibility of the media. Here are a few of the articles from The Guardian:<p>22 Apr 2013: Life on Mars to become a reality in 2023, Dutch firm claims<p>19 Jan 2014: Why we want to spend the rest of our lives on Mars<p>9 Feb 2015: Mars One mission: a one-way trip to the red planet in 2024<p>17 Feb 2015: Mars One shortlist: the top 10 hopefuls<p>19 Feb 2015: Why I want to be a passenger on Mars One<p>30 May 2015: Can Mars One colonise the red planet?<p>It was always complete bullshit, anyone with a smidge of technical or scientific background said so repeatedly, so why they did write about it so many times? Yes, I know the proximate reasons – Mars One had a good PR agency, The Guardian wants clicks, etc. But The Guardian is meant to be a good, trustworthy news source, and here they were giving credibility to what I can only describe as a scam artist, or at best, a completely deluded entrepreneur.<p>It should never have gotten as far as it did, and I blame the media for this.

I find it amazing that, even though Mars One looked so sketchy since the beginning, still 200,000 people applied for their program. That means that still many people dream about exploring space. If a solid project was launched, probably hundreds of millions of people would apply to travel and settle down on another planet. It makes me very hopeful.<p>Until a few years ago, medias were always very negative and described space exploration as a waste of money. But, it is getting a bit better. This may be thanks to Space X, the new race to the Moon (China), the landings on a comet (Europe) and an asteroid (Japan), the Indian mission on Mars, and so on.<p>Now, the project of replacing the ISS (end scheduled in 2020) with a permanent base on the Moon sounds more plausible (Moon Village).

My friend &quot;applied,&quot; knowing full well it was a scam. He said that he regretted nothing, as it allowed him to fantasize about the journey more concretely. So perhaps it served the same function as pornography.

Instead of offering dumb 1-way trips to Mars why not create round trips to the Moon and back? You can see Earth from the surface of the moon, see the lunar lander, drive a lunar rover, bounce around for a bit then hop in your module and head back home and live the rest of your life with a new perspective. More interesting than Mars, and doesn&#x27;t take months to get there.

This looked like a con job from the start. I can only hope some creditors get their money back, and that those responsible get punished accordingly.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now.<p>Even Gerard &#x27;t Hooft, famous physics nobel prize winner and one of the ambassadors of Mars One said the schedule and budget were off by a factor of 10. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2015&#x2F;feb&#x2F;23&#x2F;mars-one-plan-colonise-red-planet-unrealistic-leading-supporter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;2015&#x2F;feb&#x2F;23&#x2F;mars-one-pla...</a>

It&#x27;s not a legitimate airline unless it&#x27;s been bankrupt at least twice. ;-)

Much too ambitious, especially with massive organizations (such as NASA) being unable to with much larger budgets and experience. Called it as a non-starter from the get-go. Good thing too, probably would have blown up on the pad and never left earth.<p>I think they could have got quite a bit of funding from crowd sourcing with lower ambitions, such as having a crowd-sourced satellite to go to Mars to conduct research. They could pay some external company to do a lot of the engineering and just act as a middle-man.<p>Like the cube sats, offer to take other people&#x27;s research&#x2F;commercial projects all the way to Mars and you have yourself a semi-viable investment project. For the backers, allow them time on the satellite, name stuff, something on the satellite that stores something personal to them (perhaps digitally and transmitting it back to earth with a massive time delay) - I think people would be interested.

Yet someone got paid and declared mission accomplished. Hilarious unless you were an investor. Maybe the engineers that worked at the company wrote really productive code in a really productive language. And the company offered amenities and benefits that were unlike anything else.

It&#x27;s like Fyre Festival, but in spaaaaace.

Based on the AMAs the founder gave on Reddit, it looked like a scam to be honest.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IAmA&#x2F;comments&#x2F;uta10&#x2F;iama_founder_of_mars_one_settling_humans_on_mars&#x2F;?sort=qa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IAmA&#x2F;comments&#x2F;uta10&#x2F;iama_founder_of...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IAmA&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1tw2fy&#x2F;i_am_bas_lansdorp_cofounder_of_marsone_mankinds&#x2F;?sort=qa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;IAmA&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1tw2fy&#x2F;i_am_bas_lansd...</a>

A lot of people who were looking forward to dying in space are going to be disappointed.

Bas Lansdorp was one of the supervisors for my BSc graduation group project at TU Delft. I had some interesting interactions with him and a few others affiliated with Mars One back then, before Mars One was on the table.<p>I think the whole Mars One story will make it into a Hollywood script, because there&#x27;s been more drama than most good movies I&#x27;ve watched in recent times.<p>There are thoughts about the project that I&#x27;d rather not share publicly, especially since I also know one of the main authors of the MIT study that became the focus of a lot of the critique about the feasibility&#x2F;viability of the entire project.<p>Safe to say, Mars exploration is hyper-complex because of complexity in a whole host of dimensions, not just technical&#x2F;scientific. Mars One exemplifies that.<p>I&#x27;m involved in Mars analog simulations missions through the Austrian Space Forum [1], so I&#x27;ve got a pretty good reading of the complexity that goes into planning &amp; operational excellence.<p>If I had to sum up the whole Mars One journey in one word, it would be: underestimation.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oewf.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oewf.org</a>

Personally, I&#x27;m waiting for the &quot;put rocket boosters on Mars and fling it into Venus, re-enacting the impact that created the Moon and altering Venus&#x27;s orbit to be approximately opposite of Earth&#x27;s (but still safely far away), thus creating Earth-2&quot; mission.

I look forward to the Netflix documentary.

So many comments here are really depressing and lack a sense of adventure and romance. Yes, Mars One did not have a sound plan, but it inspired a certain kind of person who wants a grand adventure with impact. Mars to Stay is a legitimate idea and makes a lot of sense for colonization: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mars_to_Stay" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mars_to_Stay</a><p>The Mars One idea of turning the colonists life into a reality TV show would be the first reality TV show I&#x27;d ever want to watch and would make a fantastic documentary.<p>So, while Mars One was severely flawed, I think the Mars to Stay philosophy makes a lot of sense if we want to colonize Mars.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w</a>

I don’t know much about this subject so excuse a naive question: why Mars and why not the asteroid belts where I have read that there are raw materials and large amounts of ice? Is it because of negative health effects living in zero gravity and&#x2F;or problems creating artificial gravity with rotation?

Great podcast about this, although I&#x27;m halfway spoiling it by telling you it&#x27;s about Mars One.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;loveandradio.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;hostile-planet&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;loveandradio.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;hostile-planet&#x2F;</a>

I, for one, am shocked that these guys couldn’t crowdfund their way to Mars. After all, it only cost NASA (frantically punching numbers into a 4-function desk calculator) $315bn to get to the Moon in current dollars. I mean, that’s only 77x total funds raised on Kickstarter to date. Perhaps they should have added the Kupier Belt as a stretch goal?

What would concern me is if they did managed to get people to Mars, then went bankrupt, leaving no new supplies being sent across.

Nobody wanted 1-way trips to Mars? Shocking.

Does anyone remember Dennis Tito&#x27;s Inspiration Mars Foundation?

Even extraordinarily exorbitant fads finally fade.

This reminds me of the Fyre documentary.

Just to go out on a limb here, I am guessing that the &quot;one way&quot; bit put a bit of a kink in their marketing efforts...

Perhaps the point of this was to build a database of people who are demonstrably gullible, to be targets of future scams.

How did I not see this coming

Fraud

just Yesterday I commented on another article here about space colonialization being alchemy of our times and I got downvoted. And Today this...

There can&#x27;t be a Mars colony without a legal code for Mars. Shanghai in the 1930&#x27;s is the existing framework. It didn&#x27;t work then, and it won&#x27;t work now.<p>See, marslegalcode.org.

Gosh, what a surprise. I&#x27;m sure this saga will convince the general public of the need to be more sceptical about pie-in-the-sky bullshit in the future, and nobody will ever fall for pseudo-scientific scams again.<p>Now, if you&#x27;ll excuse me I&#x27;m just going to go for a quick jaunt on the Hyperloop.

As long as everybody is investing their time, money and health as free choice I think it&#x27;s a good thing and we should support them.<p>Of course it&#x27;s a pipe dream. Of course people will dump sh*tloads of money for no results. Of course people will die if they really start doing stuff like this. But is there really a way to achieve such kind of goal without such sacrifices?

I&#x27;m surprised at the negativity on this on a startup accelerator&#x27;s site where &quot;a small chance of success&quot; - Gimli style - means game on.<p>At my org, we&#x27;ve had one of these round 3 candidates give a talk about it and the interview and training process they went through seemed like no joke. It seemed to me that if you were to start a company with the final selectees, it would be hard to fail.