Monthly Archives: October 2014

Colonizing Marshas long represented one of the more ambitious dreams for space travelproponents ranging from NASA scientists to Silicon Valley entrepreneur and SpaceX founderElon Musk. The latter also envisions sending humans to Mars sometimes in the next several decades, and has mused about how to build a Mars colony population of 1 million people in anAeoninterview.

Mars One a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands shares some of the Musks goals and indeed, the Mars One vision relies on Musks SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket. ButMars Onesconcept of seeding Mars with human colonies by launchingone-way missions recently received some close scrutiny from a team of MIT researchers.

The MIT teams critique identified potential challenges and estimated that settling thefirst batch of Mars colonists would require about 15 launches of the Falcon Heavy rocket being developed by Musks firm SpaceX at a cost of $4.5 billion. MIT also suggestedthat Mars Onemay want to dial back itsaggressive schedule of sending four-person crews every 26 months starting in 2024.

The MIT paper took a particularly close look at the Mars One idea that it could establish a sustainable colony on Mars using existing technology starting in the 2020s, according toSpace Policy Online. MITs researchers concluded that Mars One was overreaching with its statement that no new major developments or inventions are neededto make such an effort possible. In a Reddit AMA, they also urged Mars One to take a slower-paced approach that field-testedall the necessary habitat equipment on the red planet before sending humans.

We believe this is a time for boldness in space exploration, but there is also a necessary amount of caution, said MITs team, a groupoverseen byOlivier de Weck, an aeronautics and astronautics engineer at MIT.A catastrophe in the early days of Martian colonization may cripple the endeavor in todays risk-averse society.

In 2012, Mars Onefirst proposed sendingMars settlers on a one-way trip to the red planet starting in 2024 a project based on the idea of making such a Mars endeavor into a multimedia reality show. Mars One also envisions first sending robotic missions to set up the crew habitat between 2018 and 2023, before the first humans ever set foot on the red planet.

MITssimulation of the Mars One mission plan highlighted a few areas in particular.

First, the study found that thecost of the permanent colony would grow steadily over time because of the increasing requirement for spare parts spares would account for an estimated 62 percent of mass transported to Mars after almost 11 years of settlement.

Second, the studyidentified a potentialproblem of managing excessive oxygen levels if the Mars One effort grew all its food as crops on the red planet.

Third, it pointed out thatcarrying all food from Earth could bemore efficient than growing Mars crops because of Martian agricultures equipment requirement.

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Will Humans Start Colonizing Mars in Ten Years?

WASHINGTON: 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. The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running, he told Popular Science magazine. But he claimed the researchers used incomplete data, adding that technology for Mars colonization was nearly ready. While oxygen removal has never been done in space, I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars, Lansdorp told AFP. Of course, the actual apparatus that we will take to Mars still needs to be designed and tested extensively, but the technology is already there. Many people have voiced doubts about the mission, though the project has won support from Gerard t Hooft, the Dutch 1999 Nobel Physics prize winner. The Red Planet lies at least 55 million kms from Earth and it would take a minimum of seven months to get there. Last June, the entertainment company Endemol, a major reality television producer, agreed to film the participants as they prepared for the move to Mars.

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Humans may only survive for 68 days on Red Planet