I first read about Mars One sometimes last year and it all sounded so unreal, like something closer to a fairy tale than to an honest, realistic attempt at space exploration. And yet, these Dutch guys seem to be dead serious about their plans, according to which the selection process for the first astronaut team(s) is about to start sometimes in the next six months. Three years from now the first supply mission (unmanned) to Mars is supposed to happen. Seven odd years after that the first four astronauts are to arrive. And everything is supposed to cost somewhere around six billion US(?) dollars. It still sounds overly optimistic, bordering on utopia, to me. What do you people think about it?
its a space media propaganda designed to lure people's money. You want space closer to people? You want people closer to space? Than invest your time, thoughts, money, and support to companies who create feasible and proven solution to space access. Rising companies like SpaceX, ScaledComposites, BigelowAerospace, and etc... They are taking steps in the right direction by innvesting in LEO first, something that matters close to home and will be funded. JPL has achieved an unprecendented success with Mars thanks to their billion dollar funding for the Mars program, they are government and never were meant for profit, this is money that has been granted due to the current wanted political stance of a country in terms of space advances. Companies like Mars-One are one out of archaically endless companies out there with big promises and no experience, nor any clear systematical engineering plans for their proposed access to space. Dream of space, but take it through logical steps. There is no one way ticket to Mars, one must first test technologies associated with such a mission, send a robotic mission with proven 100% success, test human subjects for such a mission for their psychological and physiological as well as their knowledgeable skills during such a mission, develop many fault scenarious of something going wrong and assess as many risks as possible, test test test and test again. This isn't a fairytale if you know how every aspect of a mission will work. And it will happen, but not with these idiots "Mars One". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Don't forget tat only a third of all things sent to Mars ever reched there , the rest were "lost in space"! Lately they have been getting better and are achieving far greater sucess but only after many buillions of dollars were lost due to something happening to the spacecraft sent to Mars. We know that radiation is very destructive to humans and prolonged exposure to it will alter humans in many ways including killing tem eventually. So before we go sending humans to other planets we better send more rovbots first to see if they can determine if humans could survive and to see if they can get there and return back to Earth. So far there has not been any spacecraft that has returned to Earth so I think that would be the next step to see if thatcan be done before we risk human lives, don't you?
Hayabusa and that NASA aerogel S mission were recent successful sample return missions, none from mars thou. Sample return mission from Mars would be too expensive
Mars one is simply going to fail. That said I don't see any real problem with the one way mission afther you make a few small adjustments why don't they aim for the moon and in stead of sending actual humans why don't they send humanoid robots similar to ASIMO that can be tele-operated from the Earth. Without a human crew the mission parameters get way clearer because if the goal is getting there your pretty screwed once you get thereand you get the apollo problem of great now what? The lander could explore the local region mine helium3;ice and turn it into fuel, build a observatory do some other insitu productions like making solar cells. Making the hubble has had a estimated cost of 10 billion$ perhaps making a liquid mirror telescope on the moon would even be cost effective (http://www.space.com/3183-lunar-observatories-grand-plans-clear-problems.html)
