Mars One Finalist: It's All a Scam

MonsterCrit

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Lightspeaker said:
MonsterCrit said:
I've often said. before they can build a base on the moon, they need to build a self-sustaining colony on the ocean floor. At least a thousand feet down. Yeah I know space and the ocean are two fairly different environments but the methods and problems are comprable. You have to creat a sealed, air tight, pressurized enclosure capoable of withstanding a variety of stresses. Find a way to generate, store and recycle oxygen water and food for the long term, and keep people from going batshit insane for the same period.

It'll be cheaper, easier and less harmful than trying to develop the techniques in space.. for starters there's a whole slew of problems caused be low-micro gravity. Weakening of the bones, heart, muscles and blood vessels for starters.. Then there's the bacteria. Yeah apparently in low gravity, Virii fungi and bacteria basically go super saiyan.. while the human immune system conversely gets a little weaker.
Actually you're very much off on your estimations and assumptions here.

The bottom of the sea is a far more hostile environment than space is. The great pressure under the sea makes it a significantly harder engineering challenge to build a liveable environment down there. Space is -14.7 psi pressure compared to Earth sea level. Pressure on Mars is slightly above that. Five miles under the sea is 11,800 psi pressure.

It almost can't be done. And even if it could it'd likely be exponentially more expensive and unbelievably dangerous (because you flat out could not have any flaws in design at all or the entire thing would instantly implode).


Sources in case you want to read a bit more:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/31/why-dont-we-spend-more-on-exploring-the-oceans-rather-than-on-space-exploration/
http://www.quora.com/Given-the-actual-space-station-ISS-would-it-be-cheaper-to-build-the-equivalent-at-3-4-5-miles-deep-underwater-Why
I said comprable and more cost effective. Not easier. The conditions are more hostile in some ways, You do not have to worry about radiation shielding under the sea. But that's a good thing. 'Pair and a Spare' as engineers say. For critical system find out what the greatest stress level will be then build to exceed that by 50%. The reason it'd be easier in some ways and cheaper... getting materials to the site will be exponentially cheaper. Not to mention if something goes wrong during testing it'll be much easier to rescue and recover.

The short is.. if you can build a dome a thousand feet down in the ocean and have it self sustainable.. moon or mars should be relatively easy.
 

Smooth Operator

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Well I genuinely believed someone was putting together a plan, as in they are getting engineers and funding to work shit out, there is no lack of plausibility in that. In case people aren't aware there is non-stop research been going on surrounding this subject, entire sealed ecosystems built to test colonization theories. I didn't think this shit will just be done over night, that would be moronic to conceive.

But it looks like there isn't anything going on then, and if this guy hadn't come forth shit really would blow out big years from now.
 

Vlado

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Feb 21, 2015
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Ahhh... Too good to be true, indeed. It's incredibly depressing how many trillions go towards military and feeding the arms industry, while space exploration gets crumbs in comparison. What else to expect then, other than humanity destroying itself before reaching the stars?
 

Gennadios

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Saltyk said:
Yeah, basically, its not likely until we make some huge leaps in technology. Artificial gravity is pretty much necessary and some sort of faster space travel would be nice.
Only if you look at it from the getting us there as-is perspective. Bio tech research will make it feasible for the human race to modify itself to work in low-g, high radiation environments before engineering will make it viable to send a modern human on any kind of extended journey.

Not that I don't think Humanity technologically incapable of succeeding on any kind of trip at the moment, I just think approaching the problem from a purely engineering angle is what's liable to keep costs incredibly high.
 

Rowan93

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Grape_Bullion said:
If anyone born before the year 2050 sincerely thought they were going to see humans on Mars in their lifetime, they deserve a smack in the mouth for being so dumb.
It's not coming soon, but those numbers and that level of certainty sound way off. I mean, the extreme is 2049 + 80 years = 2129, and that's further into the future than the Wright Brothers' first flight was in the past. I don't think you can predict anything with "if you disagree you're stupid" levels of certainty about things that far in the future, considering how much has changed in the last 100+ years, even if you dismiss the idea that change is accelerating.
 

Cerebrawl

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MonsterCrit said:
I've often said. before they can build a base on the moon, they need to build a self-sustaining colony on the ocean floor. At least a thousand feet down. Yeah I know space and the ocean are two fairly different environments but the methods and problems are comprable. You have to creat a sealed, air tight, pressurized enclosure capoable of withstanding a variety of stresses. Find a way to generate, store and recycle oxygen water and food for the long term, and keep people from going batshit insane for the same period.

It'll be cheaper, easier and less harmful than trying to develop the techniques in space.. for starters there's a whole slew of problems caused be low-micro gravity. Weakening of the bones, heart, muscles and blood vessels for starters.. Then there's the bacteria. Yeah apparently in low gravity, Virii fungi and bacteria basically go super saiyan.. while the human immune system conversely gets a little weaker.
Moon base is less of a challenge than deep sea base, for a number of reasons. Most of which have to do with extreme pressure. A thousand feet down is 31 atmospheres of pressure. If you have the living quarters at surface pressure, to avoid physiological problems for the inhabitants, then the structure needs to be extremely structurally reinforced to not collapse in on itself, see: crush depth. If you have the indoor enviroment at ambient pressure, the people will have to be breathing some very exotic gas mixture, probably a mainly hydrogen based gas mix with less than 1% oxygen(hydrox, like something from COMEX's Hydra 10 experiment), the decompression time to go back to the surface would be measured in weeks or months.

By contrast, a facility on the moon or mars just has to have enough structural strength to withstand having a single atmosphere of pressure on the inside, and less on the outside. This is far less of an engineering feat.

But yes, the main problem for human habitation in lunar/mars/space enviroments are those caused by low gravity. Though Mars wouldn't be nearly as bad as space or moon, since at least it has 0.38G gravity, vs 0.165G for the moon.

Piorn said:
ooooh , so once again an organization promises salvation for monetary compensation, and it turns out it's all just a big fraud.
Where's Martin Luther when you need him?
I don't think Mr. "Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy faith has" is going to be of any help in scientific endeavors.
 

Grape_Bullion

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Rowan93 said:
Grape_Bullion said:
It's not coming soon, but those numbers and that level of certainty sound way off. I mean, the extreme is 2049 + 80 years = 2129, and that's further into the future than the Wright Brothers' first flight was in the past. I don't think you can predict anything with "if you disagree you're stupid" levels of certainty about things that far in the future, considering how much has changed in the last 100+ years, even if you dismiss the idea that change is accelerating.
I'd be a little less cynical if you know... going places not called "Earth" were a priority for nations. We're hardly capable of putting humans into orbit at this point. Mars is a pipe dream.
 

Johnny Impact

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We can barely get little robots there. Robots that don't breathe, eat, drink, or poop in vast quantities. Anyone old enough to read this who thinks a manned Mars mission will happen in their lifetime is a fool, and I can't be the least bit sorry if they donated to such an obvious scam.
 

Ladylotus

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008Zulu said:
Europa has water and oxygen, probably not near survivable levels, but it's a better objective to aim for.
Better objective? Europa is insanely far compared to Mars, and we haven't done any in-depth exploration of it.

What we should be doing is trying to set up something on the moon, then use it as a jump off point to Mars. Sure Mars is a desolate rock, so are most other bodies in the universe. The point is that we would have done something no other human being would have thought possible. Humanity would no longer be confined to one planet, our chance as a species wouldn't hinge on one moment of bad luck.

Would the resources be costly? Oh yeah. The profit loss would be impossible to make up, at least for decades (unless we found some sort of Hollywood mineral worth billions). But accomplishing even a survivable habitat on the moon would be one of the greatest feats in human history, and something we should be striving towards.
 

Pyrian

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MonsterCrit said:
The short is.. if you can build a dome a thousand feet down in the ocean and have it self sustainable.. moon or mars should be relatively easy.
Setting aside whether the seafloor is a useful analogue... We haven't even really managed that feat on the surface. The Biosphere experiments were, AFAIK, the closest we've come. You don't have to go anywhere to confront the challenges of a sealed sustainable environment. You can build it in your backyard, and if it works, you've significantly advanced our potential space colonization capabilities.
 

Pseudonym

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I had heard about this from friends and I was like. "Sounds cool. Not sure if they'll make it, but it sounds cool." I never read up on it. I have hardly any idea of the problems that go into putting people on Mars. I understand the distance, the lack of oxygen and the dangers of getting hit by astroids and such. But how expensive it would be and whether 6 billion is a lot? Idunno.

It makes sense that this wouldn't work, though. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't. And if somebody could be put on Mars for 6 billion dollars some major government would probably have gotten around to sending an expedition at this point. I hope to see somebody on Mars in my lifetime. Technology and human society often develop in unexpected ways. As far as I know, we might not be on Mars for another 500 years or we might be on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri by the end of my lifetime.

If this does turn out to be a total scam I would be pissed. Scamming people by playing on their hopes and dreams is pretty low.
 

Zhit

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So Mars One has 99 astronauts and Roche ain't one. Seems like a song waiting to be made....
 

Atmos Duality

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Roche said:
"My nightmare about it is that people continue to support it and give it money and attention, and it then gets to the point where it inevitably falls on its face, if, as a result, people lose faith in NASA and possibly even in scientists."
That's why you don't put faith in scientists, but in proofs and evidence.
Scientists are just people; people are fallible and all too often, dishonest.
 

IamLEAM1983

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I remember having a hard time actually believing anything that came out of Mars One's PR goons. They're handling the permanent isolation of a group of humans on some hypothetically reacheable planetoid - albeit one that takes decades to reach at currently attainable speeds - with the kind of disregard for sensible behavior you find in reality shows.

I've gone over some of their released memos on Mars One's website, and the feeling I get is one of incredible naïveté. Everything is framed as though NASA is just sitting on the tech needed to make the trip viable, or as if their corporate backers actually came from the Marvel and DC universes (as in, they'd be helmed by genius billionnaires just itching to pull an Elon Musk).

There's a lot of "Yeah guys, it's gonna be awesome!" in the subtext, but it's like watching kids brainstorm homebrew RPG rulesets: there's a lot of glee involved, a lot of confidence - but zero understanding.

My take on things is that it isn't so much a scam as the most egregious case of horrible management and terrible foresight imaginable. For God's sake, their business plan included funding the mission with the returns from the reality show's broadcasts and associated merch! Even if their Mars One series ended up being a mega-success, they'd pull in, what - millions? That's a far cry from the billions any developed nations with a serious manned space program requires.

If anything, I think the actual avenue to sending people to Mars is in developing more tangible collaborative projects between the corporate and federal spheres. SpaceX feels like a step in the right direction.
 

mohit9206

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It would have been more believable had they said one way trip to the moon instead of Mars.
Humans ain't landing on Mars until another 50 or so years atleast perhaps even more but Moon is definitely doable for paying customers within this generation. I would gladly pay $100k for a one way trip to moon if i had the money.
 

theNater

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IamLEAM1983 said:
I remember having a hard time actually believing anything that came out of Mars One's PR goons. They're handling the permanent isolation of a group of humans on some hypothetically reacheable planetoid - albeit one that takes decades to reach at currently attainable speeds - with the kind of disregard for sensible behavior you find in reality shows.
What planetoid is that? Can't be Mars; that's less than a year away if you time your launch right.
 

Therumancer

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IamLEAM1983 said:
I remember having a hard time actually believing anything that came out of Mars One's PR goons. They're handling the permanent isolation of a group of humans on some hypothetically reacheable planetoid - albeit one that takes decades to reach at currently attainable speeds - with the kind of disregard for sensible behavior you find in reality shows.

I've gone over some of their released memos on Mars One's website, and the feeling I get is one of incredible naïveté. Everything is framed as though NASA is just sitting on the tech needed to make the trip viable, or as if their corporate backers actually came from the Marvel and DC universes (as in, they'd be helmed by genius billionnaires just itching to pull an Elon Musk).

There's a lot of "Yeah guys, it's gonna be awesome!" in the subtext, but it's like watching kids brainstorm homebrew RPG rulesets: there's a lot of glee involved, a lot of confidence - but zero understanding.

My take on things is that it isn't so much a scam as the most egregious case of horrible management and terrible foresight imaginable. For God's sake, their business plan included funding the mission with the returns from the reality show's broadcasts and associated merch! Even if their Mars One series ended up being a mega-success, they'd pull in, what - millions? That's a far cry from the billions any developed nations with a serious manned space program requires.

If anything, I think the actual avenue to sending people to Mars is in developing more tangible collaborative projects between the corporate and federal spheres. SpaceX feels like a step in the right direction.

Well, part of what your saying is touchy. There have been statements for a long time that we have the tech to not only reach Mars but begin terraforming (a very slow process) which seemed to have been backed up pretty reliably. The big issue of course being politicians wanting to be re-elected so wanting to fund things fighting symptoms of problems now that have a tangible result even if no long term value, compared to everyone putting the long term first, getting on the same page, and pushing for space travel because despite no short term returns it's the solution to pretty much every long term problem humanity faces. I seem to remember back when I was in the 1980s hearing it claimed that we were going to launch a mars mission "any day now" and how a lot of the technology we were using came from the space program as a by product of planning for a mars mission. As a general rule I see no real reason why we can't land a first mission on mars for that reason, the big question is always going to be whether it survives or not, odds are we should expect the first few missions of this sort to fail as we gather more data.

When it comes to funding the idea here seems to be that they are doing the PR in a style that appeals to the current everyman. The plan seems to be to make just enough money to do some basic construction, and as they do more they hope to cover it heavily and convince more people to donate as they see increasingly tangible results. As they get closer their broadcast rights and merchandising could be worth increasingly more. Indeed if the launch was happening tomorrow I could easily see them pulling down a few billion in PPV and advertisements to a literally global audience.

The plan isn't a bad one, and truthfully I'm willing to grant the tech is out there. The big question I always have is that if they do get this starting 6 billion dollar budget they are lining up investors for, exactly where will they begin construction? Right now for example getting a craft into space and sending it towards Mars is easy, and with our current computers and information from satellites I expect it won't even be hard to stay on course. I mean we've been sending people into space and through orbit for a while. The big question I keep wondering is who is actually willing to sell them, and then let them store enough rocket fuel to build, test, and launch, something that size. It's possible of course but whose back yard is this happening in supposedly, and have they gotten permission given the security concerns this raises. I'm also guessing that if they plan to launch and build a shelter capable of lasting decades they plan to use nuclear power, so of course one has to ask who is giving them permission to build and run a private nuclear reactor, and probably several, right next to that giant missil.. err space ship.

At the end of the day what this project entails is making a ship carrying a module probably around the size of a "Trident" class submarine with multiple nuclear reactors powering it which is both the command module of the ship and the module that will land and be the "colony". Unlike a space shuttle the ship only has to launch once, and then land once, and in performing the landing the only part that needs to survive is the module since it's a one way trip. None of this really goes beyond what we've already done, it's just an extension of projects we've seen before. We know we can launch stuff into space, we know we can send something we've launched to mars, and we know we can land things there albeit we've only done it with a small robot to my knowledge. It's simply a matter of scale. Built correctly you could probably have a small group of humans in that "Trident" with a hydroponics module, and other renewable food sources like say rabbits which breed rapidly. It could also be armored well enough to survive 50-60 years. If the plan was also to begin terraforming hypothetically we'd probably need another separate module the size of the command module, which would of course double the project, and to my knowledge I've heard very little about doing anything of note once we put people there, the point being to land people specifically for inspirational purposes.

For the price of six billion I cannot see them doing all of this just considering what a Trident can cost to make, and we're talking something far more ambitious than even that. That said they could probably make a good start on it, once they started building their module, then they might say be able to get governments to donate nuclear reactors, and of course given them areas to launch from, in return for such assistance though I'm sure the government would of course want to have it's own people involved, and probably in charge of the mission itself, and presumably then start helping with funding, as well as whatever people provide as it comes closer and closer to fruition.

It's highly optimistic, but I can see it happening, even if I certainly wouldn't want to bet in favor of it. The only real scam I see in this so far is that I do not see how they can promise people spots in this mission, when at the end of the day your going to need some pretty high standards. I can see a lot of people volunteering for this to be honest, but at the end of the day your going to need tons of engineers and people like that, not a bunch of pie in the sky dreamers, and theoretical physicists when to my knowledge it's uncertain there are any definite plans to do research, that would make sense, but would require increasing the mission parameters for labs, and of course a module that would allow people to enter and leave, as well as suits allowing people to survive on mars rapidly increases the complexity of the plan beyond the already ambitious "land a giant armored module full of people intact enough for them to live out the rest of their lives, even if not in any degree of comfort".