Different Mars One Finalist: It Totally Isn't a Scam

[Kahani]

First up, to refute Roche's claims that many of the top 100 "bought their way in," MacDonald says that the only necessary payment is a nominal application fee, and notes that several second phase applications who donated quite large sums of money did not make it through to the third phase.

Firstly, just because some people didn't succeed at bribing their way in doesn't mean no-one does. Having to send any money as part of a job application is decidedly dodgy, even if no-one pays anything after that.

Another of Roche's more worrying concerns was that he never actually met anyone from Mars One in person, and the only interview he had was a 15-minute Skype call. MacDonald does not refute this, but states that the online interview's purpose was to ensure all applicants around the world were subject to the same criteria. He assures us that more thorough testing and interviewing will come later in the process.

So he completely agrees that the only interaction so far has been a single short Skype call.

Another popular claim is that Mars One has no money, as the initial six billion dollars was supposed to come from a broadcasting deal that has fallen through. MacDonald says that actually, the money is coming from private investors, who will get a stake in the TV broadcasting rights as a result of their investment.

I've bolded the relevant parts. The claim that Mars One has no (or at least very little) money appears to be correct, saying that money will turn up soon does nothing to refute that.

While MacDonald certainly makes some compelling counter-points

Where? You've quoted three of them, and none of them come close to even being counter-points, let alone compelling ones. One does nothing to refute anything, and the other two appear to agree entirely with the critics but just deny that they're problems.

at this stage it is essentially his word against Roche's word.

Not even close. There's plenty of information about the project, and none of it comes close to adding up. They don't have the money, they don't have the technology, they don't have the partners, and they don't have sensible plans to develop any of this. It's been incredibly obvious right from the start that it's just PR for a TV show and not an attempt to actually send people to Mars.

 

[TheNaut131]

...am I the only one who when I heard them say it would be filmed like a "reality show" I figured it would be more like C-Span? Just like a constant feed of a few rooms, people walking back and forth, doing their task, and occasionally people just talking about what they're doing?

Like seriously, this whole "oh-no-don't-vote-people-off-reality-show-tropes" thing is getting old and some of ya'll are really bent up over all that.

Oh no, I'm not defending the shady business practices and info surrounding Mars One, I'm just saying some of ya'll are too damn worried about the whole reality show thing. Let it go. If such a thing were to occur, it probably wouldn't be that bad a thing, or at least as bad as you think it.

But aside from that, yeah, this whole thing is sketchier than a 50 year old physics student with Parkinsons note book after being run over 50 times by tires made of sandpaper. Mars One isn't happening.

 

[Newage]

I get the feeling that - when the time comes to reveal the spaceship - it'll be a rusty old van. With the windows painted over. And "free candy" spray painted on the side. The whole things just smells a little... funny.

Note to Mars One people: please prove me wrong. I want to believe!

If they want to be convincing, they'll use a winnebago.

 

[Callate]

This whole "single Skype interview" thing all sounds well and good if this were a manga or some late-evening tv potboiler involving shadowy conspiracies. In the real world, though? There should be some physical evidence that one could point to regarding the existence of a six billion dollar program that plans to establish a viable colony on Mars.

So, no, I'm still thinking the "this is all a scam" is by far the more likely scenario.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

As others have said, show me the ship. Show me the facilities. Show me Mars One's plans once they'll get past the "short Skype call" phase. Show me their business plans and convince me the project's higher-ups aren't just so starry-eyed that they can't see the faceplant in the making for what it is.

Convince me. Until then, I'll keep resting on the personal belief that my grandchildren's children are going to be lucky if they so much as live on a lunar colony or a permanent orbital settlement. Mars is one tough cookie to sell.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Like to say I called it. I heard about this and from day on I called it as a scam. Now to be honest if If they'd said... the moon, I'd have been considerably less skeptical but mars. He have enough trouble landing hard machines on mars and with those we don't have to worry about any things like.. air, water, squishy internal organs.

Though I am curious how many Mars points ghe earned himself by defending Mars One.

 

[Mortuorum]

I get the feeling that - when the time comes to reveal the spaceship - it'll be a rusty old van. With the windows painted over. And "free candy" spray painted on the side. The whole things just smells a little... funny.

Note to Mars One people: please prove me wrong. I want to believe!

If they want to be convincing, they'll use a winnebago.

Off-Topic-ish: http://www.vialarp.org/special/yugo.htm

 

[Hero in a half shell]

We are going to see some people die in space and crash land on mars aren't we... Our first foot print is going to be the severed foot that was flung from the wreckage of this insanity isn't it....

Considering our success of landing 100% metal probes on Mars (or on anything in space really) is shaky at best, getting what is essentially going to be a full space station of squishy people to land first time on it's maiden voyage smoother than the Millennium Falcon seems like a pipe dream.

I find it weird that they are shooting straight for Mars colonization, instead of the moon, or even the ocean. Heck, the International Space Station manned by veteran space professionals isn't even fully autonomous and some company that is backed by advertising revenue from cable TV channels says it can permanently establish and keep 100 people on Mars for several decades?!?

Shouldn't we let the professionals slowly work out how to get the process right in our backyard before we head 35 million miles away in a tin can funded by the same people that brought us "Duck Dynasty" and "Pawn Stars"?
We don't trust these channels to give an accurate rendition of what some hick sold to a shop in Alabama and we're putting them in charge of 100 people's lives and risking it all on the single most technologically advanced operation in human history... for some channel views?!?

There was a UK tv show that did the exact same as Mars One:

I'd forgotten about that show. That was simply amazing when it aired.

"Good lord it's the mission commander's moustache!"

 

[Therumancer]

It's like this, as far as I understood things they were supposed to still be trying to gather the financing to make this viable. The only part I've been suspicious about was them claiming to have the project up and going within 3 years. Of course then again I've also suspected the whole idea was to start building things, fire up public excitement, and then hopefully secure the rest of the funding later. Most of what makes this seem shadowy is that right now they haven't done a whole lot, but then again to my knowledge they have yet to actually put together the six billion they mention as needing.

As far as the actual cost of a mars expedition goes, the only reason why governments have not done it is that as a general rule politicians are too weak willed and would rather spend money for short term political gains by fighting the symptoms of problems coming from resource depletion, overpopulation, and other issues rather than pursueing long term solutions like space travel which while they could take generations to see returns would be able to obtain minerals and eventually living space. This is one of the reasons why I've mentioned that earth could really use a forward thinking tyrant or two rather than a bunch of sheeple elected politicians only thinking as far as their personal benefit at the moment. Of course this is a philosophical argument that goes well beyond the topic at hand here, and it's a matter of weighing the pros and cons. The bottom line is that in absolute terms I have no doubt we could start colonizing Mars, putting bases on the moon, etc... if we decided to dedicated the focus to it.

The biggest tangible problem I've always had with Mars One has been the lack of legal problems, which is also my issue with a lot of private space research companies that make great claims. For example just wanting to store vast quantities of rocket fuel to test boosters and such is going to be a big deal, and of course any such facility is likely to face tons of NIMBY sentiment when people want to build the gigantic storage tanks and such for it.

Of course the other part of this that makes me think scam is of course a little different as well, namely that few of the people selected seem even remotely qualified to make this trip. The idea here being largely to establish a functional base, even if the people are going to die off. This means you'd expect them to have redundant engineers and a lot less people in the field of say physics, who might be qualified to do research, but don't exactly have any practical survival based skills. Not to mention the ages and such involved.

That said Mars One itself has yet to respond so we'll see if that happens and if so what they have to say. It's not just that I'd like to believe that it's real, but also that it seems that the people claiming it's a scam are largely being paranoid, perhaps not without justification, but right now there is no evidence one way or another.

 

[faefrost]

We are going to see some people die in space and crash land on mars aren't we... Our first foot print is going to be the severed foot that was flung from the wreckage of this insanity isn't it....

It's like Jamestown... In Space! As a reality show.

 

[dalek sec]

Jeez, this is starting to sound like The Producers. There's no ship, there's nobody actually currently contracted to build a ship or a lander or even a training facility, and what the investors are getting in return for their money is a stake in future TV rights. Sounds like Mars One makes out like bandits so long as they get a bunch of investors and the project flops right when the buzz dies down without ever sending anything into space.

I have no proof that it's a scam, but they're sure as hell not getting a living person onto Mars in ten years either on their current trajectory.

Spring Time For Hitler on Mars.

I would pony up the money in a heartbeat to see that play, I really would.

OT: Of course it's a bloody scam, as many in this thread have said: Show us the ship being build, the training area's or fucking anything at this point that would prove us wrong and make us say "Our bad, sorry".

And in other news: grass grows, sun shines, bird's sing and Sailor Jupiter is the best Sailor Scout.

 

[Korolev]

The entire project is shaping up to be a colossal disappointment/scam, and I absolutely agree with Dr. Roche. A 15 minute skype call before selecting the finalists? That's a joke. An absolute joke. This project aims to send people on a one way trip to Mars with as-yet unseen, unproven technology. Not only is that an insanely risky venture on any level, but if you are going to proceed, you WANT THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST. Not 21 year old uni students who you've skype-called! For 15 minutes!

The fact that 21 year old uni students with minimum training are even being considered is insane. INSANE. Astronauts/Cosmonauts/Taikonauts are selected from the best and brightest a nation has to offer - to even be considered for space travel, you have to prove yourself to be insanely skilled or insanely clever (and ideally both). The reason why is because 1) Space travel is VERY dangerous and 2) The equipment is expensive as all get-out. If I'm building billions-of-dollars worth of equipment to get to Mars, I want the best hands managing that equipment.

Space Travel is still in its infancy - a lot can go wrong. Unexpected events can occur. When they do, you want people who know how to stay calm in the face of danger, who have proven themselves capable of following protocols under stress and who can think on their feet. Fighter-pilots, for example, tend to make better astronauts. When you are sending people up there in a tin-can, that will be bathed in space radiation, that may experience a multitude of problems, you want THE BEST.

And there's no evidence that they've built anything that could get them to Mars. What ship are they going to us? What rockets? Who's going to build them? What's the timeframe? How are they going to train? For how many years are they going to train? Have they picked a landing site? How are they going to send supplies? Who will provide the supplies?

All we've heard is this - they want a TV show and they want bodies. This smells like a scam or a cleverly marketed reality-TV show that has no ambitions other than getting some good TV ratings. The entire venture is stupid on its face. Note that the elites aren't volunteering for this mission - you're getting uni-students and dreamers. Not one genuine astronaut/cosmonaut, not one person with the credentials or the capacity for making it into space, has volunteered for this "endeavour", because they know it's all a joke. A colossal joke.

The minute they started considering 21 year old UNI students with NO flight experience or military training as final candidates sent a red flag the size of the red planet they hope to land on.

 

[Smooth Operator]

The fact that 21 year old uni students with minimum training are even being considered is insane. INSANE. Astronauts/Cosmonauts/Taikonauts are selected from the best and brightest a nation has to offer - to even be considered for space travel, you have to prove yourself to be insanely skilled or insanely clever (and ideally both). The reason why is because 1) Space travel is VERY dangerous and 2) The equipment is expensive as all get-out. If I'm building billions-of-dollars worth of equipment to get to Mars, I want the best hands managing that equipment.

Well let's be honest here, the first creatures sent into space were flies, fish, frogs, mice, rats, rabbits, monkeys, dogs,...
You don't strap your unproven concept rocket to your best and brightest because those guys you need to make future rockets, you strap that shit to the first 10 idiots who willingly sign a consent form.
Mars One was always intended as a one way trip, if it lasted for 5 second or 5 decades after take-off doesn't really matter, either way these people were never intended to come back again, they would be colonization guinea pigs.

And considering all Mars landings so far were done by remote/auto-pilot I really don't know why you would let anyone mess with that shit.

 

[GabeZhul]

You know what tells me that Mars One is a scam? That no one gave the Nobel Prize to the ones running the show for developing reliable cosmic radiation shielding.

Seriously, there is a reason why NASA doesn't send people to Mars, and it has nothing to do with funding. NASA could have all the money in the world, they could build all the rockets, they could plan out all the trajectories, run all the re-supply missions and create all the sustainable living habitats. We have the technology for all of that. It would cost an arm and a leg, but they could do it.

However, they still wouldn't send anyone to Mars because there is no current tech that can stop cosmic rays from slowly murdering the colonists. Hell, even on Mars, the only solution they could think of to protect them was "Dig a giant hole in the ground and make an underground base". Also, for the record, outside of the Earth's magnetosphere even the smallest solar flare would fry the colonists, and we have no way of telling when and where solar flares and coronal mass ejections would occur to plan around them.

So no, until someone creates Star Trek bubble shields for our space tech, Mars is pretty much the realm of robotics. Just got to the Moon.

 

[mrdeclandeadly]

The minute they started considering 21 year old UNI students with NO flight experience or military training as final candidates sent a red flag the size of the red planet they hope to land on.

Astronauts have to go through rigorous training, and testing. They have to be psychologically tested to insure they aren't going to crack up along the way. The fact that they are even considering university students, who as you have said have no flight experience or military training is a massive red flag to me.

Then there is the cost, correct me if I am wrong, but I have read that they estimated the cost of the mission at around 6 billion dollars??(is that right), which seems either incredibly naive or just plain stupid. Considering the cost of the Apollo program was over $25 billion. I know that was several different missions, but the majority of that was developing the Saturn V rocket itself, and this is in 1969, each rocket cost $375 million just to launch. Which in today's money is billions of dollars. And NASA has estimated a mission to mars could cost $100 billion, there is simply no way that Mars One could ever hope to raise even close to that amount of money.

My thoughts are that they know that the mission will never go ahead, and are simply using people to try and make as much money as possible.

Source for NASA estimated cost(on page 32): http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/41431/1/09-3642.pdf

Source for cost of Apollo program : http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186600-apollo-11-moon-landing-45-years-looking-back-at-mankinds-giant-leap

 

[Olas]

I'm with NDT on this one.


I don't want it to be a scam, I don't want it to be a disaster, but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and has the financial backing of a duck....

 

[FalloutJack]

One guy says it's a scam, another guy says it ain't. Can I get a "DIS GUN BE GOOD" pic in here?

I'd like to see this pan out in favor of space, but let's just all see how things develop, hmmm?

 

[Varis]

As long as they find some Prothean ruins in there, let's just assume the 21-year old student is right and we're right about ready to go see the galaxy!

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah no, just because he is older and has a PHD doesn't mean I take his word over the first one but in saying so it doesn't mean I competely favout the first guy comment. I mean I commenting that I myself isn't fully convince that this project is fully legit.

 

[SinisterDeath]

I mentioned this in the other thread (First article) but it's just plain out not possible.

Instead, they should work with the Biosphere 2 and have people live in it for 2 years (while filming it). It was created initially for simulation of a space/moon Biodome and already had 8 people live in it for 2 years successfully (largest man made sustaining artificial environment so far). There is tons of technical data etc, but the short version is we can create something that will keep people alive on mars, but we needs additional minerals/O2 etc to keep it going (which can be brought along and planned for) as even the best setups have continual loss (so it's not self-sustaining long term).

This of course is what needs to be done first, way before a shot at the moon (let alone mars). Mars does have more gravity (a bit more then 2x as much as the moon..so that would help with long term effects on bone mass etc). The largest advantage though (since the moon comparably is far easier to reach) is the supply of minerals and material to build with on mars, and the fact that ice is available (which can be broken down into o2 to resupply a base).

I stand by my general belief that we need a decently sized space station first, then we need a base on the moon (Very low gravity means building things there would be a great idea), and then we can start building the bigger ships to send to mars etc. We are not even close the reaching the first stage (A decent sized space station with fairly regular ships going back and forth between it and earth). Anything of such a large scale (colonizing mars basically), would require at least a large country to have a reach chance of success, and personally I think it would take the world working together towards a common goal. That being said, if I was China I would be totally working on colonizing mars cause whoever gets there first owns the planet (and therefore has mostly won all the rest of the planets in our solar system as well). The moon could be fought over a bit (it's not THAT hard in comparison to get there, but waging a war against someone already entrenched on mars? Good luck. China has the resource, the control (IE no need to worry if the public approves), and the technology at this point to pull it off...and I wouldn't be surprised if they have been working on it for awhile already. Mars one though is just not real....not without billions and billions of dollars which would require some of the richest people in the world to be supporting it, and we would have heard about that.

^This here is spot on. WE can't just jump straight to mars without the infrastructure to get there first! What's proposed is plopping a lander on mars, and just letting them die there with probably a few months supplies. A mission like this, would requires years, decades to set up! They would literally need to be sending out supplies, materials, fuel right NOW just to make them last a year or two on mars!