I don’t know how many of you are space fanatics, but one of the candidates selected in the “Final 100” has just come forth and spilled the beans that Mars One is a con / scam or hoax.
http://www.techspot.com/news/60071-mars-one-finalist-breaks-silence-claims-organization-total.html
[quote=175154:@Tim Jones]I don’t know how many of you are space fanatics, but one of the candidates selected in the “Final 100” has just come forth and spilled the beans that Mars One is a con / scam or hoax.
The technology is not even here to envision anything in a regular life time. This confined already to a fairy tale…
This concept will be a tempting fairytale for quite some time and will not come to fruition until we can at least make it past the moon with a manned flight.
I read that the other day. I was skeptical about the concept from the beginning. Weren’t they “planning” on doing this with only a $6-$7 billion dollar budget?
I’d like to just make to TO the Moon with another manned mission. If you can search back to Dysan’s Orion project, we should be WAY, WAY, WAY beyond where we are now.
(that started in the 50’s…)
For starter, if Virgin Galactic had not exploded, the hope of going just above the athmosphere would have existed.
Rocket science, without a payoff in relatively short term timelines, isn’t something that businesses will get into.
Note that none adopted any business model until nearly 40 years AFTER Apollo, and even well after the shuttle.
Now there’s the prospect of business they’re in there (dont get me wrong this is good).
BUT the boost to get things started probably has to be govt sponsored in one way or another.
The current congress in the US renders the likelihood they’ll do anything close to 0.
So maybe the EU will pursue something.
China might, but again its a governmental agency not private business doing it.
It’d be fun to see a person on another planetary body again
Yeah I’m old enough I watched the first landing on TV in grade school.
You won’t see it here in the US in any of our lifetimes. $18+ trillion in debt and the hole just keeps getting deeper. As far as the space program, I’m afraid we peaked with the Apollo missions.
I’m guessing China goes first
I think it’s wide open as to who eventually gets there first. Financially the US is a train wreck, I don’t think the EU is that much better off and China probably isn’t in as good a shape as their propaganda says…
I grew up watching the Apollo launches on TV (and the original Star Trek in reruns) and I’m feeling like we are probably back to about the early 1900’s in terms of the resolve to get beyond our own orbit with a manned spacecraft. Hopefully, some country has the vision and ambition to do what the US has lost. 
I wouldn’t give up on Mr Musk & Spacex just yet. While I agree with Normans earlier post - Mr Musk seems to have a resolve that rises above profit.
[quote=175235:@Michael Bierly]I think it’s wide open as to who eventually gets there first. Financially the US is a train wreck, I don’t think the EU is that much better off and China probably isn’t in as good a shape as their propaganda says…
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If finances truly mattered in some of these dictatorial countries North Korea would be long gone - instead it has one of the worlds largest standing armies thats very well equipped
It’d be fun
And it would certainly make some of the conspiracy theorists pause - although some would still claim its a hoax
well the life expectancy was calculated to be only 68 days after Mars touchdown… so yeah… I’d roll those dice (Snake Eyes!)
Personal resolve is one thing. Finances is probably the bigger issue.
In 1970’s $ Apollo cost something like $20 billion - today that’d be over $100 billion.
I suppose it will also depend on how much basic technology & learning NASA et al did back then & since that can still be used to help keep costs way down.
They did a lot of basic research & development on a lot of fronts that SpaceX maybe doesn’t have to redo
Is it weird that America is like a 60 year old man having a mid-life crisis trying to recollect the days of college and moon landings?
What? These “Brave explorers of the new frontier” would only live for 68 days? That isn’t so much brave as it is suicidal…
It is hard to fathom that a 68 day post arrival survival period isn’t just a really fancy way to commit suicide.
But some perceived it as the chance of a lifetime - such as it was.
Now maybe the 68 days was “you have 68 days to get the rest of this equipment up & running so you stand a chance of living longer”
That might not be so bad IF they sent a crap load of equipment ahead of time that could generate oxygen electricity etc.
That seems to be the thinking.
There’s a movie that has a plot line like this - Red Planet or Mission to Mars maybe.
Still this would be hugely expensive given our limited ability to get supplies off the face of the rock we live on.
[quote=175520:@Norman Palardy]It is hard to fathom that a 68 day post arrival survival period isn’t just a really fancy way to commit suicide.
But some perceived it as the chance of a lifetime - such as it was.
Now maybe the 68 days was “you have 68 days to get the rest of this equipment up & running so you stand a chance of living longer”
That might not be so bad IF they sent a crap load of equipment ahead of time that could generate oxygen electricity etc.
That seems to be the thinking.
There’s a movie that has a plot line like this - Red Planet or Mission to Mars maybe.
Still this would be hugely expensive given our limited ability to get supplies off the face of the rock we live on.[/quote]
I remember hearing somewhere that it costs something like $10,000 per pound to get something into space. When I go backpacking, my pack normally weighs 35 (on summer trips) to 65 pounds (winter or long trips). That is the cost of a decent house just to get my essentials into space!
It would be a bummer if they no longer thought the cost was worth it… Budget cuts…
It is amazing how propaganda plays into the human brain to make belief. It appears even the Constellation program got out of reach very quickly, yet the moon can be considered a suburb of earth. The International Space Station is quickly becoming dead and chances are there will not be anything like it in the mid term.
Before jumping to mars on a pedalo, would it not be more sensible to start with a station on the moon, so technological and human experience gained will enable another jump ? How much progress would have been possible if only after landing on the moon, NASA had not dumped all lunar projects ? This whole Mars thing looks like a kid who barely removed the extra wheels from his bike, and wants to run the Gumball.
Here’s the thing. It takes just about as much money to get supplies to the moon as it does to get supplies to Mars. That’s because the majority of the cost is lifting the stuff out of Earth’s gravity well. Once the stuff, be it people, supplies, rubber duckies, whatever, is beyond Earth’s gravity it is pretty much a case of “shut down the engines , sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Michel, you’re right. A base on the Moon, possibly growing into a colony, would be smart. And not just for the learning - but as a manufacturing base for the things needed for a Mars expedition. It is far less costly to lift stuff out of the Moon’s 1/6th gravity than from Earth. A mining colony on the moon could produce the materials to build ships and equipment for not only a Mars trip but, later, asteroid mining for minerals and water.
Unfortunately, NASA and space exploration isn’t glamorous any more so the government funding dried up. There is no blazing short-term rewards to entice investors. In the USA, politicians keep harping on “we need to do something NOW” and “we need to thing about the next generation”. Space travel is a long-view item; one that looks toward the future of 100 to 1000+ years. Sad, really!