Daily Archives: October 15, 2014

The Mars One Foundation's plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is judged unrealistic.

The Mars One Foundation's ambitious plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is an unrealistic goal given current technology levels, according to a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate engineering students.

Most troubling for the tens of thousands of would-be Mars colonists who've applied with the foundation, lead author Sydney Do wrote that growing crops in a Mars habitat would quickly "produce unsafe oxygen levels."

Do, along with colleagues Koki Ho, Samuel Schreiner, Andrew Owens, and Olivier de Weck, published an assessment of the Mars One program's timetable and likelihood of success, presenting the paper at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto.

The Mars One Foundation, a non-profit based in the Netherlands, held an open casting call for would-be Mars colonists last summer, with the idea of forming a 40-candidate group that would begin training in 2015 for a series of colonizing missions launching in about a decade. More than 100,000 people from around the globe applied, according to the foundation, including 30,000 Americans.

Mars One founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp claimed last year that it would cost in the neighborhood of $6 billion to send the first four-person crew to Mars, with additional colonists sent later.

The good news for Mars One is that Do and his colleagues think that first mission could be done for even cheaper.

"The space logistics analysis revealed that, for the best scenario considered, establishing the first crew fora Mars settlement will require approximately 15 Falcon Heavy launchers and require $4.5 billion in funding," the MIT students wrote.

Unfortunately, that's about the only positive about the Mars One program in the researchers' paper, titled "An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan."

Do and his colleagues figure the cost of maintaining the Mars colony while adding additional colonists would grow and grow, perhaps prohibitively. Though the colonists would presumably try to utilize Martian materials as much as possible, the graduate students estimated that only 8 percent of the colony's needs would be met by in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).

Continued here:
MIT Students Bash Mars Colonization Plan

WASHINGTON Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait. Conditions on the red planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to fall after about two months, and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based nonprofit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the planet starting in 2024.

A short list of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible for now.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on the oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

Shipping replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

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Humans may only survive 68 days on Mars: study

Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the Endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

Shipping in replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

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WASHINGTON Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait. Conditions on the red planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to fall after about two months, and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based nonprofit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the planet starting in 2024.

A short list of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible for now.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on the oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

Shipping replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

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Tuesday October 14, 2014 08:02 PM

By Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times (MCT)

A team of engineers at MIT that studies the technology needed for humans to live on other planets has determined that the Mars One plan to send four people to colonize the Red Planet by 2025 is not possible.

The claim they make is that no new technology is required for their mission, said Syndey Do, a doctoral candidate in aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the lead author of the study. Our numbers show that is not feasible.

Mars One is a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands that has boldly promised the world to send four people on a one-way trip to Mars by 2024, with an additional four people arriving every two years.

To finance the mission, the Mars One team has proposed a reality TV show in which 40 aspiring astronauts from around the world would compete to be the first people to settle on Mars.

The MIT team was already at work on building what they call a settlement-analysis tool (its a computer model) that would help them understand what was needed for humanity to live on another planet. After chatting about the Mars One project in their office one day, they decided to use their tool to see whether the Mars One plan had legs.

Their results are published in a 35-page report on the MIT website.

It was a really good intellectual exercise for us, Do said. And it tested some of the modeling capabilities that weve been trying to develop.

To test the feasibility of Mars Ones plan to have colonizers grow all their food, the team built a simulated Martian habitat, put in data on how crops grow in space and then put in ideal growth conditions. Even with those ideal conditions, the Mars One would need an area four times larger than the one it had planned, they said.

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Is Mars One ready to colonize the Red Planet? MIT engineers say no