Comments, observations and thoughts from two bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is an associate professor. Mark is a professional statistician and former math teacher.
Two MIT engineering students just faced off with a private company that wants to send people on a one-way trip to Mars — and one group won by a landslide.
The debate stemmed from the students' scathing critique of Mars One's plan to set up a permanent human colony on Mars. That report, published in 2014, triggered widespread criticism of the company's too-low $6-billion budget, unrealistic timeline, and general lack of preparedness for the challenges of Mars.
The Mars One habitat will be covered by a necessary layer of soil that provides shielding even against galactic cosmic rays. Sixteen feet (5 meters) of Martian soil provides the same protection as the Earth's atmosphere — equivalent to 1,000 grams per square cm(227.6 ounces per square inch) of shielding. The Mars One habitat can support a soil layer 36 feet (11 m) thick. If the settlers spend, on average, two hours per day outside the habitat, their individual exposure adds up to 22 mSv per year.
As mentioned before, two of the major issues in the Mars One involve the definition of "existing" technology and the way the project fails to account for technological unknowns and development costs. Case in point, the proposed Mars rover, which will have to greatly exceed any of its predecessors in functionality while remaining small enough to be lowered by sky crane (assuming that Mars One isn't planning on developing entirely new EDL [entry, descent and landing] technology).
Here are some relevant passages from the Mars One website [emphasis added].
Mars Landing Module: Mars One will secure the landing modules from one of the experienced suppliers in the world, for example Lockheed Martin. Similar landers will be equipped to perform different functions.
Carrying Life Support Units that generate energy, water and breathable air for the settlement.
Carrying Supply Unit with food, solar panels, spare parts and other components.
Carrying Living Units that are outfitted with deployable inflatable habitats.
Carrying Humans to the surface of Mars
Carrying Rovers to the surface of Mars
Rovers: Two rovers will be sent to Mars to set up the outpost before the humans arrive. One of them will explore the surface of Mars in search of the most suitable location for the settlement, transport of large hardware components, and the general assembly. Mars One’s rover supplier will determine the exact rover strategy; it is possible that instead of one large rover, multiple smaller rovers will be sent. For example, a main rover accompanied by a trailer system used for transporting the landing capsules.
You often encounter this kind of nonchalance about details in statements from Mars One, along with absolute confidence in the budget estimates that were based on those vague details.
The Mars One roadmap gives an idea of just how versatile the rover will have to be. Keep in mind, all of this has to be done autonomously before the first crew arrives.
One intelligent rover and one trailer will be launched. The rover can use the trailer to transport the landers to the outpost location. On Mars, the rover drives around the chosen region to find the best location for the settlement. An ideal location for the settlement needs to be far enough North for the soil to contain enough water, equatorial enough for maximum solar power, and flat enough to facilitate the construction of the settlement.
When the settlement location is determined, the rover will prepare the surface for the arrival of the cargo missions. It will also clear large areas where the solar panels will lie.
...
The six cargo units will land up to 10 km away from the outpost on Mars. The rover will pick up the first life support unit using the trailer, place the life support unit in the right place, and deploy the thin film solar panel of the life support unit. The rover will then be able to connect to the life support unit to recharge its batteries much faster than using only its own panels, which will allow it work much more efficiently.
The rover will pick up all the other cargo units and deploy the thin film solar panel of the second life support unit and the inflatable sections of the living units.
...
The rover will also deposit Martian soil on top of the inflatable sections of the habitat for radiation shielding.
We are talking about a lot of soil here (think five meters) and a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of precise work. Add to that concerns like dust and the need to be absolutely maintenance-free (if the rover breaks down, future launches can't proceed). To accomplish all of this will require a tremendous amount of engineering talent. Mars One claims this can be done quickly at bargain-basement prices.
NASA called for proposals for the rover's scientific instruments in April 2004,[80] and eight proposals were selected on December 14 of that year.[80] Testing and design of components also began in late 2004, including Aerojet's designing of a monopropellant engine with the ability to throttle from 15–100 percent thrust with a fixed propellant inlet pressure.[80]
By November 2008 most hardware and software development was complete, and testing continued.[81] At this point, cost overruns were approximately $400 million. In the attempts to meet the launch date, several instruments and a cache for samples were removed and other instruments and cameras were simplified to simplify testing and integration of the rover.[82][83] The next month, NASA delayed the launch to late 2011 because of inadequate testing time.[84][85][86] Eventually the costs for developing the rover did reach $2.47 billion, that for a rover that initially had been classified as a medium-cost mission with a maximum budget of $650 million, yet NASA still had to ask for an additional $82 million to meet the planned November launch.
In case you were wondering what a sky crane looked like.
This is one of the many reasons why aerospace people roll their eyes when Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp starts talking about being able to carry out the project just using existing technology.
There’s no comfort in the statistics for missions to Mars. To date over 60% of the missions have failed. The scientists and engineers of these undertakings use phrases like “Six Minutes of Terror,” and “The Great Galactic Ghoul” to illustrate their experiences, evidence of the anxiety that’s evoked by sending a robotic spacecraft to Mars — even among those who have devoted their careers to the task. But mention sending a human mission to land on the Red Planet, with payloads several factors larger than an unmanned spacecraft and the trepidation among that same group grows even larger. Why?
Nobody knows how to do it.
Surprised? Most people are, says Rob Manning the Chief Engineer for the Mars Exploration Directorate and presently the only person who has led teams to land three robotic spacecraft successfully on the surface of Mars.
“It turns out that most people aren’t aware of this problem and very few have worried about the details of how you get something very heavy safely to the surface of Mars,” said Manning.
He believes many people immediately come to the conclusion that landing humans on Mars should be easy. After all, humans have landed successfully on the Moon and we can land our human-carrying vehicles from space to Earth. And since Mars falls between the Earth and the Moon in size, and also in the amount of atmosphere it has then the middle ground of Mars should be easy. “There’s the mindset that we should just be able to connect the dots in between,” said Manning.
But as of now, the dots will need to connect across a large abyss.
“We know what the problems are. I like to blame the god of war,” quipped Manning. “This planet is not friendly or conducive for landing.”
The real problem is the combination of Mars’ atmosphere and the size of spacecraft needed for human missions. So far, our robotic spacecraft have been small enough to enable at least some success in reaching the surface safely. But while the Apollo lunar lander weighed approximately 10 metric tons, a human mission to Mars will require three to six times that mass, given the restraints of staying on the planet for a year. Landing a payload that heavy on Mars is currently impossible, using our existing capabilities. “There’s too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on the moon, using propulsive technology completely,” said Manning, “and there’s too little atmosphere to land like we do on Earth. So, it’s in this ugly, grey zone.”
But what about airbags, parachutes, or thrusters that have been used on the previous successful robotic Mars missions, or a lifting body vehicle similar to the space shuttle?
None of those will work, either on their own or in combination, to land payloads of one metric ton and beyond on Mars. This problem affects not only human missions to the Red Planet, but also larger robotic missions such as a sample return. “Unfortunately, that’s where we are,” said Manning. “Until we come up with a whole new trick, a whole new system, landing humans on Mars will be an ugly and scary proposition.”
If you're interested in aerospace, I'd recommend reading the entire article. It walks through all of the not-very-good options in detail.
Although the ethical and legal challenges facing Mars One are considerable, this venture will ultimately rise or fall on the technical and engineering elements. The stated aim of Mars One, according to their website, is to use “existing technologies available from proven suppliers.”1 This statement provides the first crucial difficulty. At each crucial phase of the mission—travel to Mars, landing, and establishing a permanent colony—the claim that of utilizing existing technology is unsustainable.
For example, at present the only existing operational human spaceflight vehicle is the Russian Soyuz capsule. Mars One states that the existing technology that will be used to traverse millions of kilometers from the Earth to Mars will instead be a variant of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. To call the considerable research and development that this would require as “existing technology” is, at best, grossly oversimplifying the issue.
The Mars One project also provides no detail in respect of the development of reliable and effective life support systems and the problematic subject of dealing with human waste disposal. These are issues that will ultimately need to be solved for a successful mission to Mars, and there is significant research and development activity ongoing in this area.2 Such technology is, however, by no means “existing” without a significant amount of investment in research and development.
The picture is very much the same when considering the critical issue of landing the Mars One colonists on the Martian surface. Considered one of the most problematic aspects of human exploration, it is this aspect of the Mars One project where the notion of using existing technology is exposed as being dangerously misleading. The existing technology that has landed rovers on Mars is inadequate for landing humans.3 The Martian atmosphere poses considerable and serious challenges for landing a heavy payload onto the surface. The atmosphere varies considerably, making it extremely difficult to scale up existing technology used to land small rovers. Supersonic retropropulsion, which at present seems the most promising method of overcoming the obstacles posed by the variable Martian atmosphere, still requires expensive research and development.4 Again, this is not a problem unique to the Mars One project. It is, however, a fundamental obstacle to a 2023 mission with a projected budget of $6 billion.
Assuming, however, that the Mars One crew successfully makes it to the Martian surface, one aspect of space technology that remains untested, and makes the Mars One project fundamentally different from any previous space activity, is the technology required for the permanent settlement of Mars. Much has been made of in situ resource utilization (ISRU) technologies that will enable the colonists to live off the land. The much-publicized MIT feasibility study of Mars One casts significant doubt on the readiness of this technology, none of which has been deployed in practice.5 When challenged on this, the Mars One team responded by maintaining that the MIT study was based on ISS operations and therefore the study does not provide a valid comparison.6
Such assertions are, however, inconsistent with the stated aim of using existing technology. Either Mars One will utilize existing technology that has been tested in space on the ISS (in which case the MIT study is valid), or they will be looking to extrapolate new, untested methods of ISRU, which raises questions of reliability and cost in terms of money and time. In any event, the MIT study did not consider issues such as establishing a reliable power system and communications network, as well as the costly issue of spacesuit and habitat development. All these issues raise further questions about the technical feasibility of the entire venture.
... and, as promised in the last post, we are approaching the end of this thread, but I recently came across this article from 2013 and since I haven't said much about those 200,000 applicants...
Mars One opened its application process for potential colonists on April 22 of this year and set a deadline of Aug. 31. Applicants have to pay a fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 depending on which country they live in. The fee for United States citizens is $38.
On April 10, Lansdorp told SPACE.com that Mars One expected to get 1 million applications. By mid-April, the foundation had 45,000 people registered for its mailing list and had received 10,000 emails from individuals. By early May, two weeks after applications opened, Mars One was claiming 78,000 applicants.
At the time, Lansdorp said in a statement: "These numbers put us right on track for our goal of half a million applicants," lowering the applications bar he had set a few weeks earlier.
By Aug. 22, Mars One had received about 165,000 applications, meaning the foundation could have a total of around 200,000 in hand by the Aug. 31 deadline. Lansdorp told SPACE.com on Aug. 23 that potential applicants should not be concerned about any perceived lack of qualifications: "We have the feeling that people feel that, 'If I’m not a pilot or I don’t have astronaut training already, how can I ever be qualified to go to Mars?' And actually, the opposite is true."
The average application fee is about $25, Lansdorp said, so 200,000 submissions would bring in about $5 million. That would leave Mars One $20 million short of what it would have gotten from 1 million applications (and $7.5 million shy of the $12.5 million that 500,000 applications would have brought in).
However, Lansdorp also told SPACE.com last week that the 165,000 included those that had not paid. He declined to say how much revenue applications had generated.
Then there’s the company’s claim that 200,000 people applied for a one-way ticket. This incredible piece of information issued by Mars One’s press office was picked up with credulous haste by news outlets around the world. Even religious leaders made their opinions known, with the UAE-based General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment strictly forbidding Muslims from applying, as to leave the sanctity of Earth was an affront to Allah.
But Norbert Kraft, the chief medical officer, has told The Guardian he was sorting through 80,000 applicants, not 200,000. NBC News tallied the number of video applicants on the Mars One website and came to 2,782, each of whom paid an application fee of between $5 and $75. I ask Lansdorp if in the course of fact-checking this story he will allow me to see the list to verify the number. I ask where the 200,000 people registered their interest and if it was ever made public. His answer was…complicated.
“I don’t know if that was ever made public, but they have registered on our website for applying for our program,” he says. “Then there was a number of steps where people had the opportunity to drop out as that was exactly the point. The application process was kind of a self-selection that avoided us having to review all of them. The first step was paying the application fee. A number of people already dropped out there. Then there was a video that you had to make and questions that you had to answer. And that’s also where a lot of people dropped out, that they’re not lying in their motivation.”
I ask again if sharing the list would be possible to verify the figure.
“Of course we cannot share the details of the applicants with you because that’s confidential, private information that we cannot share.”
I offer that the names can be redacted in maintaining the privacy of the applicants before viewing the list.
“Ah, no. I’m not interested in sharing that information with you.”
He emails later, with an invitation to come at my own expense to Mars One’s office in the Netherlands and see the list in person, though cameras will not be allowed. “I will need to read your article before publication and reserve the right to deny you access to the list if I don’t like what you wrote.”
When Mars One, Dutch non-profit foundation, launched a program to establish permanent human settlement on the red planet, they never thought that they would be swamped with a flood of applications. Shockingly, 202,586 people signed up for this crazy, one-way trip to Mars, of which 100 made it to Mars One’s highly coveted shortlist.
One of the aspects of the Mars One story that I allude to frequently but probably don't emphasize enough is that there is no there there. Every component of the proposal collapses under scrutiny.
One example I don't believe I've gotten around to is the selection process.
Take a moment and think about this scenario. You are trying to put together a crew for a long, arduous, complex, insanely ambitious mission with virtually no redundancy. You want to do everything possible to minimize the risk of either a medical or a psychological crisis.
With health concerns in mind, you would probably not want to include a crew member who will be pushing 70* at the beginning of the mission in 2026.
In a decade or so, when most people her age will be retiring from their working lives, Elena Shateni, now 58, plans to be starting a new life planting the human flag on Mars.
While egalitarianism is admirable in principle, in a mission with limited resources and a small crew, there has got to be some level of specialization. Having one crew member lost or incapacitated threatens the safety of the rest of the crew and the viability of the entire mission.
And remember, we are talking about an ongoing mission. This means that crew members need to be performing at full capacity for years to come. It is entirely possible that septuagenarians and even octogenarians could stand up to these rigors and perform these duties. It is not, however, something you would want to count on.
Keeping costs low means avoiding unnecessary risk; it also means avoiding unnecessary drama. We can never say in advance how someone will deal with the stresses associated with physical danger, life in incredibly cramped quarters, permanent relocation, and isolation. We can, however, reasonably assume that certain groups will be at higher risk than others.
George Hatcher welcomed a guest at his Merritt Island home last week with 5-month-old daughter Io, named for one of Jupiter's moons, tucked in a baby carrier on his chest.
Inside, the NASA engineer's wife, Lorenia, took the baby and their 2-year-old son, Rafael, offered a small stuffed lamb and a Thomas the Tank Engine train for inspection.
Hatcher stretched out with Rafael on the living room floor to work on an animal puzzle, then played a game of "tickling spiders" and swung his son high up with his legs, to squeals of delight.
It's family time the 35-year-old father cherishes after a day at work at Kennedy Space Center. But he increasingly has reason to think about the day he might leave it all behind.
...
Hatcher recently advanced to the final round of 100 candidates vying to be selected as astronauts by the Mars One Foundation, which wants to establish a human settlement on the Red Planet in the next decade.
...
Mars One estimates it will cost $6 billion to get the first crew to Mars, a figure many consider optimistic.
[That last paragraph isn't relevant to this post but I just had to throw in the phrase "many consider optimistic."]
Even under normal circumstances, extended or indefinite separation from a child can be extraordinarily difficult on a parent. In times of crisis, it can be almost unbearable. Including parents in the selection pool greatly increases the chance of a mission-threatening breakdown.
These are not isolated cases. If you read over the profiles of the other hundred finalists, you will find a large number who seem obviously ill-suited for this kind of project. People who seem, perhaps not coincidentally, better suited for a reality show.
To get a sense of how this happened, it is useful to take a look at the application FAQ on Mars One's own website. Here's an excerpt;
CharacteristicPractical Applications Resiliency
Your thought processes are persistent.
You persevere and remain productive.
You see the connection between your internal and external self.
You are at your best when things are at their worst.
You have indomitable spirit.
You understand the purpose of actions may not be clear in the moment, but there is good reason—you trust those who guide you.
You have a “Can do!” attitude.
The rest is not much better. Amateurish, badly thought out, with the language of a motivational speaker not quite covering the lack of any real plans.
Dr. Michio Kaku has perhaps the best quote (buried deep in what is otherwise an ABC puff piece):
“This has the atmosphere of a circus, where you have amateurs simply raising their hand, volunteering to be the first person on Mars.”
* "There is not an upper age limit to apply for the astronaut selection program. If the applicant enjoys good health and he or she has all the other characteristics needed for the mission he or she has what it takes to apply." -- from the website.
One of the most discouraging things about following the coverage of Mars One (and of science and technology reporting in general) is seeing how little important revelations are allowed to interfere with a good ongoing story.
Take the popular journalistic sub-genre, the Mars One "how does it feel to be going to Mars?" interview. It is, largely by design, an almost perfect human interest story. It was also an extremely easy and inexpensive segment to produce.
The weak point of the sub-genre has always been the premise. The dramatic impact depended on treating the project as credible. Keeping that premise believable while maintaining journalistic standards has always been a challenge, but over the past few months, it has become almost impossible.
A quick recap of recent Mars One developments:
The interview process has been revealed as a sham;
The company that was to produce their show has left;
Their contracts with actual aerospace companies are on hold;
Their Nobel Prize winning supporter has admitted that their budget and schedule were overly optimistic by a factor of ten;
A study by MIT PhD candidates has shown that the proposed habitat would probably kill all of the colonists in a matter of weeks.
This should effectively kill off the sub-genre but it hasn't. The trouble is that, other than the whole not being true part, this is still a great story. So we get articles like this one from Steve Annear of the Boston Globe, which slips in just enough inconvenient facts to maintain a pretense.
A Stoneham man is one small step closer to being picked for an ambitious one-way mission to colonize Mars.
Peter Degen-Portnoy was selected as a semifinalist for the “Mars One” project, a nonprofit venture aiming to populate the distant planet within the next 12 years — a plan some say is far-fetched and unachievable.
...
“The whole thing is a dream come true,” Degen-Portnoy, 51, said. “I can totally see myself . . . in that habitat, working with my team and working every day to make sure our systems are functioning and our resources are sufficient.”
Two years ago, Mars One put out a call for submissions from people interested in volunteering their efforts to bring life to the Red Planet. The Dutch organization says it received more than 200,000 inquiries [There's also a bit of a story behind that 200K claim -- MP] before whittling the list down to 100 applicants last month. Degen-Portnoy made the cut. Known as “The Hundred,” the group consists of 50 men and 50 women from around the world.
If all goes well, the husband and father of five could make it to the last round of the process, and join 24 finalists for what Mars One says will be an intense training regimen to prepare for takeoff. Groups of four will then tentatively be launched into space every two years beginning in 2026, with the first landing planned for 2027, according to the Mars One timetable, an aggressive goal that has been challenged by researchers and the public.
...
Degen-Portnoy remains optimistic about the journey to the planet, despite skepticism about the feasibility of the mission. A recent independent study conducted by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pointed out how difficult it would be for Mars One to ship enough supplies to sustain a new civilization. One of “The Hundred” also came forward in a recent interview and called the selection process, financial stability, and goals of the mission into question.
Last week, Bas Lansdorp, chief executive and cofounder of Mars One, tried to put some of those concerns to rest, and invited criticism.
“At Mars One we really value good criticism because it helps us to improve our mission,” he said in a statement.
Even if nothing comes of the actual mission, Degen-Portnoy said the experience and his involvement so far have been worth it. “I have met some incredible people, and we spend a lot of time chatting in our social group, exchanging ideas, and also boosting and supporting one another,” he said.
The list of concerns is both incomplete (check out our last few posts) and comically understated. Lansdorp's claim of welcoming criticism is also good for a laugh. Still, it could be worse. Here's the opening to a recent report from a local NBC station in Philadelphia:
Sara Director has a bright future ahead of her here on earth, but the 26-year-old — originally from the Philadelphia suburbs — is competing for an opportunity to leave that all behind for a one-way ticket to Mars. Upon discovering she made it to the third round of candidates in the Mars One mission, there’s a 25% percent chance that Director will spend the rest of her life on the Red Planet, leaving family and friends behind.
The Dutch non-profit group behind the project recently announced that it was pushing back the planned launch to 2027, due to a lack of funds for a robotic mission that was scheduled to precede the first human launch. The aim of the robotic mission is to test out the technologies required for human survival on Mars.
The Dutch-based Mars One venture is closing in on choosing its crews for one-way trips to the Red Planet, but will they be all dressed up in spacesuits with no place to go? Over the past week, there's been a string of reports that highlight the huge challenges facing Mars One.
Space News reports that the project's leaders haven't followed up on concept studies for robotic missions aimed at sending a lander and an orbiter to Mars in 2018. The Daily Mail says Mars One's deal with Endemol's global TV production team has fizzled out. Meanwhile, the Guardian quotes one of Mars One's initial supporters, astronomer Gerard 't Hooft, as saying the mission "will take quite a bit longer and be quite a bit more expensive" than advertised.
Still, a Dutch venture called Mars One has captured the public's imagination with its plan to colonize Mars by 2025. Bas Lansdorp, the group's CEO, says they've been featured in major media outlets like CNN and the New York Times. "We've been on NPR — I think twice already," Lansdorp says.
...
"For some reason that I really cannot explain, I wanted to go to Mars and build a new human settlement there," he says.
Lansdorp believes the voyage will likely pay for itself because it will be a media spectacle. Everyone in the world will want to watch the whole adventure, he says. Mars One is planning a reality TV show with sponsorships and advertising.
"We expect it's worth up to 10 Olympic Games' [worth] of media revenue, which is $45 billion," says Lansdorp.
Of course, sponsors of the Olympics can be pretty confident that their games will happen. When asked how he responds to skeptics who say that Mars One is basically just a website and a marketing plan, Lansdorp says, "I think that the people who say that really haven't paid attention to what we've achieved already."
Lots of people applied to be part of the Mars One astronaut corps — paying a fee to do so. And the group has commissioned a couple of studies from established aerospace companies.
The Mars One plan calls for first sending out a small robotic lander in 2018. Lansdorp says he can do this more cheaply than NASA. But missions like that typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars. When told that it didn't sound like he'd raised anything like that amount of money, Lansdorp replied that "we don't need that kind of money yet because we're not yet building the actual lander. But these are the kinds of investments that we're currently in negotiation for."
Still collecting notes on the big Mars One post (see here, here and here).
One aspect of the story that I probably haven't spent enough time on is boosterism. As we try to reconstruct the journalistic wreckage of the collapsing story , it's essential to keep in mind the role that reporters' and commentators' attitude toward manned space exploration played. This is a story told, analyzed, and even critiqued largely by people who wanted it to be true.
Generally this attitude expressed itself in a "don't ask, don't tell" variant of confirmation bias: reporters for the most part simply did not go looking for details that would contradict the narrative. Occasionally, though, this lapsed into deliberate exaggeration, which brings us to Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Gerard ‘t Hooft.
Dr. 't Hooft was an early and vocal advocate for the program (officially designated an "ambassador"). Here's an excerpt from his statement on the Mars One site:
"Mars One is an extraordinarily daring initiative by people with vision and imagination. All confronted with it will, like I did, respond with skepticism: This will never work. NASA has had ideas like this on the books for decades, American President Bush wanted to launch a manned Mars mission too, and it never happened. Too costly, too complicated, and too chancy, even for NASA!
But look and listen to this proposal properly! Problems are there to be solved. What is being put forward here is achievable! Here we have an enterprise that is financed exclusively by private firms, not the taxpayer’s dime. Rather than political mumbo-jumbo, we have real discussion with the general public. Only people who, like myself, are inspired by the project can contribute if they want. It will certainly be a spectacle worth watching. And, naturally, one thing stands front and centre: the technical feasibility.
...
This is when you ask me: aren’t you a scientist? What does science gain from this? Well, there are also scientific Mars missions. They cost a fraction of what this project will allocate. They are all robotic missions, but in the end science will be guaranteed to gain a great deal from human presence on various celestial bodies in our solar system. Universities don’t have the money for that. National governments have immediate priorities elsewhere. This project seems to me to be the only way to fulfill dreams of mankind’s expansion into space. It sounds like an amazingly fascinating experiment. Let’s get started!"
Perhaps even more telling is this 2013 interview from New Scientist reprinted here by Slate.
[emphasis added]
Govert Schilling: How did you get involved with a project that sells one-way tickets to Mars?
Gerard 't Hooft: The concept fits in with my own ideas about human exploration of space, which I described in my book, Playing with Planets. In fact, the co-founder and general director of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp, once attended one of my lectures. When he asked me to become an ambassador for Mars One, my first reaction was that it will take much longer and cost much more than they currently envision. However, after learning more about the research they had carried out, I became convinced that human flights to Mars could become a reality within 10 years. So in the end, I said yes.
...
GS: Wouldn't you prefer to be involved in a more scientific mission?
GtH: In a sense, this is a scientific project. There are many scientific questions that need to be addressed, and I am sure there will be plenty of scientific spin-offs, too. A lot of technological research on all aspects of the mission has already been carried out, and many of the major problems have been identified. One of the toughest problems is the radiation environment in interplanetary space. Then there needs to be research into the design of the space suits, the choice of the best location for the outpost on Mars, and the availability of water on the planet, in the form of ice. The plan is to grow food in greenhouses with artificial lighting, powered by efficient solar cells—this will involve a lot of interesting research. The most exciting question might be whether the whole idea is feasible at all. I welcome suggestions and queries from fellow scientists.
GS: How do you feel about being associated with a project funded by reality TV shows? Might you live to regret it?
GtH: Well, if people blame me for it, I have brought it on myself. However, this is the world we live in today—governments are not prepared to finance projects like Mars One, so the money has to come from some other source, and if it is a TV show like Big Brother or X Factor, then so be it.
Then again, I would rather not be involved with the TV show itself. And yes, at times I have asked myself what I have got myself into. After all, it does sound like a crazy plan. But so far, it is still fun, everything is still on track, and there do not appear to be any major obstacles. So I would tell my critics to let the facts speak for themselves.
GS: Would you encourage younger scientists to get involved?
GtH: It would not surprise me if it takes Mars One more than 10 years to put the first humans on Mars, and I can imagine it will cost more than the $6 billion currently envisioned. I have always been careful about those claims. If the project fails, my reputation may sustain some damage, but I am pretty sure I will survive that. Younger scientists, with their careers ahead of them, might run a bigger risk in that respect. Then again, I do not see how it could be held against you if you were to take part in technological design studies or in addressing various scientific issues.
In addition to the previously mentioned desire to believe which runs palpably through these statements, there are a couple of other aspects that should be noted. The first is the dissatisfaction with the pace of government-fund manned exploration. The second is the note of doubt that creeps in among the cheer-leading when the subject of budget and schedule comes up.
That was 2013. Late in 2014, bad news started breaking rapidly, most notably an extraordinarily damning analysis from students at MIT. That report appears to have been a trigger for this shift in tone [emphasis added].
The budget and timeline for plans by a Dutch organisation to colonise Mars are highly unrealistic, one of the project’s most eminent supporters has suggested.
Gerard ’t Hooft, a Dutch Nobel laureate and ambassador for Mars One, said he did not believe the mission could take off by 2024 as planned.
“It will take quite a bit longer and be quite a bit more expensive. When they first asked me to be involved I told them ‘you have to put a zero after everything’,” he said, implying that a launch date 100 years from now with a budget of tens of billions of dollars would be an achievable goal. But, ’t Hooft added, “People don’t want something 100 years from now.”
Later
A recent analysis by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) identified crucial flaws with Mars One’s published plans and predicted that even if the astronauts got to the surface unscathed, the first person would suffocate within 68 days because of a lack of equipment to balance oxygen levels effectively.
T’Hooft, of Utrecht University, said he was concerned by the findings. “I understand the scepticism very well. People from outside will say ‘wait a minute, you have to be careful with what you’re doing and what you’re claiming’. Maybe there’s a need to reassess,” he said.
He added that the “proper thing” would be for Mars One to publish its own analysis to demonstrate that their own more favourable projections about life on the Red Planet were sound.
Despite being sceptical about the details, t’Hooft said he still supported the project’s overall goals. “Let them be optimistic and see how far they get,” he said.
Just to review, all three major stages of the Mars One proposal have turned out to be fatally flawed:
There was little chance of raising six billion dollars through sponsorships and reality shows;
There was even less chance of setting up a colony on that budget, let alone in the next ten years;
Even if the project could reach Mars, the technology is nowhere near where it would need to be to sustain the colonists.
T’Hooft probably didn't know much about television and the intricacies of entertainment accounting and it seems likely that he initially took the word the Mars One people about the state of the habitat technology, but when it came to budget and schedule, t’Hooft knew he was misleading people, even if he believed it was for a good causee.
But eventually Joseph — who is actually Dr. Joseph Roche, an assistant professor at Trinity College’s School of Education in Dublin, with a Ph.D. in physics and astrophysics — found himself on the group’s shortlist of 100 candidates all willing to undertake the theoretical journey. And that’s when he started talking to me about the big problems he was seeing with Mars One.
It was difficult for him to break his silence, but he was spurred into speaking out by the uncritical news coverage. Many basic assumptions about the project remain unchallenged. Most egregiously, many media outlets continue to report that Mars One received applications from 200,000 people who would be happy to die on another planet — when the number it actually received was 2,761.
...
“When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points,” Roche explained to me in an email. “You get points for getting through each round of the selection process (but just an arbitrary number of points, not anything to do with ranking), and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.”
“Community members” can redeem points by purchasing merchandise like T-shirts, hoodies, and posters, as well as through gifts and donations: The group also solicits larger investment from its supporters. Others have been encouraged to help the group make financial gains on flurries of media interest. In February, finalists received a list of “tips and tricks” for dealing with press requests, which included this: “If you are offered payment for an interview then feel free to accept it. We do kindly ask for you to donate 75% of your profit to Mars One.” [Bold in original.]
...
So, here are the facts as we understand them: Mars One has almost no money. Mars One has no contracts with private aerospace suppliers who are building technology for future deep-space missions. Mars One has no TV production partner. Mars One has no publicly known investment partnerships with major brands. Mars One has no plans for a training facility where its candidates would prepare themselves. Mars One’s candidates have been vetted by a single person, in a 10-minute Skype interview.
WASHINGTON — A private organization that recently selected finalists for one-way human missions to Mars in the mid-2020s has quietly suspended work on a pair of robotic missions, putting into question plans to launch those spacecraft in 2018.
Mars One, a Dutch-based nonprofit organization, announced in December 2013 it was starting work on two robotic missions it planned to launch in 2018 as precursors to its human expeditions to Mars. One spacecraft would orbit Mars and serve as a communications relay, while the other would be a lander to test technologies planned for later crewed missions.
At that time, Mars One announced it had selected Lockheed Martin to begin work on the lander mission and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) to start work on the orbiter. Mars One awarded contracts to each company to perform concept studies of the planned missions.
“These missions are the first step in Mars One’s overall plan of establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars,” Bas Landsorp, Mars One chief executive and co-founder, said in a December 2013 press conference here announcing the missions. “We believe we are in very good shape to make this happen.”
However, both companies confirmed with SpaceNews that, since the completion of those study contracts, they have not received additional contracts from Mars One to continue work on those missions.
“SSTL delivered the concept study for the Mars One communications system last year,” SSTL spokeswoman Joelle Sykes said Feb. 16. “There are no follow-on activities underway at the moment.”
“Lockheed Martin has concluded the initial contract with Mars One in which we performed mission formulation studies and developed payload interface specifications to support the selection of a payload suite for the 2018 Mars robotic lander,” the company said in a statement Feb. 17. “We continue to maintain an open channel of communications with Mars One and await initiation of the next phase of the program.”
...
Those plans, though, may depend on the progress Mars One makes on its robotic missions, and there time is of the essence. Lockheed Martin noted in its statement that its proposed Mars One lander is based on a “very mature” design used on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission launched in 2007 and the InSight lander it is building for launch in March 2016.
Despite that heritage, the company said, “we would have to start construction very soon to launch an InSight clone in the 2018 window.”
Another area of concern was funding. The original plan was wildly ambitious, requiring Olympic-level profits from a proposed reality show, but the company had managed to line up an experienced partner to produce the show. Now even that is in question.
By SARAH GRIFFITHS and JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN, 23 February 2015
Last week Mars One announced a list of 100 people who will train on Earth for a one-way mission to the red planet in 2025.
But the venture's accompanying reality TV show - which was to be made by the makers of Big Brother to document their training and new lives on the red planet - has been shelved after the companies were 'unable to reach an agreement on details', MailOnline has learned.
Instead, Mars One is working with a new production company to record the colonists' progress.
It is unclear whether the breakdown in communications may blow a hole in Mars One's already tight $6 billion (£4 billion) budget because TV rights were expected to help finance the majority of the mission.
So far less than $760,000 (£496,000) has been donated to cover the estimated total cost, and time is of the essence.
However, Bas Lansdorp, co-founder and CEO of Mars One, told MailOnline that the idea of a television programme providing a hefty chunk of funding was a 'big misconception'.
'Media exposure is one of our business cases. Funding for the mission will come mostly from equity investors,' he said.
'The return on their investment will come when the first crew leaves or even when it lands: that's when the revenues from the media exposure are much larger than the cost of the mission.'
He said the documentary will 'involve more people in our adventure,' but declined to name the production company that will make the programme.
Initially, there were plans for Endemol to make a reality TV programme documenting the selection process and training of the colonists.
It was to be made by Endemol-owned Darlow Smithson Productions (DSP) and was dubbed 'Big Brother on Mars'.
But DSP told MailOnline: ‘DSP and Mars One were unable reach agreement on the details of the contract and DSP is no longer involved in the project.
'We wish Bas and the team all the very best.’
It is unclear when the decision was made, although Endemol originally said that the first installments of the TV show would air in early 2015.
Lansdorp also told MailOnline: 'We have ended our cooperation with Endemol because we could not reach agreement on the details of the contract.
'We have contracted a new production company that will produce the documentary series for us.
'They have already produced the trailer on our Youtube channel and progress is good.'
As a bit of an antidote for all the accumulated bile of the lastfewMars One posts, I'd like to recommend this IEEE paper from Ian McNab. I'll admit it lost me on the curves a few times, but on the whole it's remarkably readable.
From the introduction:
In the past 40 years, mankind has ventured into space using well-established rocket technology involving liquid fuels and/or solid propellants. This approach has the advantage for astronauts and fragile payloads that the rocket starts slowly from the surface of the Earth with its full fuel load, and, as the fuel is burned off, the altitude and speed increase. In addition to minimizing the aerodynamic and aerothermal loads, this provides relatively modest accelerations—maximum values of a few “gees” are used for human passengers. Because only a small fraction of the initial mass reaches orbit, rockets of substantial size are required to place tens of tons into near-Earth orbit. Offsetting these remarkable successes is the very high cost of burning chemical fuel with a modest efficiency in a rocket engine to get out of the Earth’s gravitational well. Present estimates are that it costs $20 000 to get one kilogram of material into orbit. Unless alternatives can be found, it seems likely that mankind’s ventures into space will be limited to a few adventures that can only be undertaken by wealthy nations—the science-fiction writer’s dream of colonizing the planets and stars may be unaffordable.
Proposed solutions fall into four general categories: better rocket propellants; the space elevator; gun launch from the Earth’s surface; and laser launch. Although these options will not be discussed in detail, a few comments are appropriate. First, there appear to be no acceptable alternative rocket propellants that can offer substantial improvements compared with present choices. Second, although the space elevator seems to have great promise as a concept for the future, its practical realization awaits the development of a material that is strong enough to be able to carry its own weight (and that of the payloads it will lift) from the Earth’s surface to geosynchronous orbit. Third, estimates indicate that to launch payloads of less than a ton with a laser would require multigigawatt lasers far larger than any presently in existence
[Having concluded that gun launches are currently the most viable option, McNab starts drilling down into the details.]
...
If the launcher is sufficiently long, the acceleration can be reduced to a level that is compatible with present component technology, although the acceleration forces will not allow people or fragile payloads to be launched with feasible launcher lengths. Guns may therefore be limited to launching robust packages such as food, water, fuel, and replaceable components. This may be an important support function for the International Space Station (ISS) or other missions
A disadvantage of gun launch is that the launch package has to leave the gun barrel at a very high velocity ( 7500 m/s) through the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to a very high aerothermal load on the projectile. The reentry vehicle community has successfully developed techniques to overcome this situation (when traveling in the reverse direction), and it seems possible that similar techniques can resolve this problem, either through the use of refractory or ablative nose materials or by evaporative cooling techniques. The mass of coolant required for this appears to be acceptable, as discussed below. The second concern for a gun is the size of the package that can be launched. Unless a very large gun can be built, the payload launched into orbit per launch will be a few hundred kilograms, which will require a large number of launches per year. For example, to provide 500 tons/year to orbit would require 2000 launches/year—a little over five per day on average. An infrastructure in space for handling this traffic and distributing the payloads will have to be created. Issues to be addressed will include decisions on handling or recycling the nonpayload components that reach orbit.
I don't want to get into whether or not we should be spending more on space exploration, and I certainly don't want to argue the merits of this proposal (that topic would take me out of my depth almost immediately). For now, I want to stay meta and discuss the discussion.
Let's think about the question of why so many reputable news organizations are devoting so much coverage to Mars One and so little to other, better aerospace stories such as this one.
What do I mean by better?
For starters, this is a credible proposal from a well-established authority published in an IEEE journal, and, based on my experience, it's an idea that other engineers in the field are not willing to dismiss out of hand; they may not consider it practical, but they do take it seriously. (For example, JPL was looking into using orbiting railguns to launch small interplanetary probes as far back as 1988.)
And we really are talking about a game-changer here. If McNab's estimates hold up, we're talking about reducing launch costs by considerably more than an order of magnitude. Even if we factor in the need to use traditional rockets for people and other delicate cargo, that cost reduction is still enough to shift the underlying economics of all space-based enterprises, ranging from asteroid mining to tourism to, yes, interplanetary colonies.
Finally, rail guns are cool. All Mars One has to offer is cheesy artist conceptions. With railguns you get video like this:
This is, of course, just one example. There are any number of fascinating stories about aerospace research. Why do they go unnoticed while Mars One continues to make the cut? Here are my guesses:
1. Bullshit does not count against you. As Elmo Keep spelled out in painful detail, every aspect of this story collapses under inspection, but even after Keep's expose, the stories kept coming;
2. People love a bargain (i.e. there's a sucker born every minute). I've noticed a number of cases recently where an unrealistically low price seems to make proposals more newsworthy (this example jumps to mind);
3. Everybody loves a messiah (even a Galtian one). Entrepreneurs and market forces are also easy pitches these days, while stories of public action and collective sacrifice fall out of favor. Of course, even in the Sixties, space was a tough sell (even as we were sending men to the moon, people were suggesting that the money would have been better spent down here), but now even the suggestion that we as a society would take on something expensive and challenging seems oddly quaint.
Given all of the renewed attention to the Mars One project, this might be a good time for a quick little catch-up essay.
Maybe it's just me, but there are a few extremely salient points that have a way of being neglected in this conversation.
First, manned interplanetary spaceflight is almost certain to be very expensive and the cost for setting up permanent self-sustaining colonies is almost certain to be many times more so.
Second, the superiority of manned versus unmanned spaceflight is, for now, almost entirely symbolic. This does not mean that there are not certain specific economic and scientific benefits associated with manned spaceflight nor does it mean that manned spaceflight is a bad idea. It just means that, given current technology, sending explorers to Mars is something that, in the final analysis, we would do because we choose to as a society. This is even more true with sending colonists.
I actually don't have a problem with this kind of argument. At the risk of some muddleheaded nostalgia, I like the idea of leaders standing up and asking the people what kind of country we'd like to live it. Though I am not a huge fan of JFK, I greatly admire both the rhetoric and the sentiment behind "not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Which brings me to my main objection to Mars one.
Without delving too deeply into the promise and the limitations of businesses like space X, when it comes to the kind of massive operations we're talking about here, we really only have two choices:
The first is to decide this is something we want to do and that we are willing to spend a considerable amount of money it would take to do it;
The second is to wait for a technological breakthrough which will change the underlying economics, with the understanding that this breakthrough may not come through in our lifetime.
I don't want to wait into that debate right now but, if landing on Mars is important, then it is a debate we need to have.
Though every major aspect of the Mars One proposal is laughably unrealistic, it resonates with people because it gives us an out. We can sit around and enjoy dreaming about how exciting the future will be without actually having to make any of the tough choices or do any of the hard work to make it exciting.
The idea of sending people to Mars just by watching a reality show is analogous to the idea that you can solve a lifelong problem with obesity by taking a miracle diet pill. I suspect that most of the people who try these products know on some level that it is foolish to trust the unlikely and unverified claims of late night TV pitchmen but the desire to believe outweighs their judgement.
Buying a proposal for a space program from a reality show producer isn't all that different.
There's been another wave of PR in support of the privately funded "Mars mission" Mars One (and yes, I do need to use quotation marks). There have been news stories, interviews with applicants who did or didn't qualify for the "mission," (NPR, how could you?) and even fictional characters like Castle and, sadly, Sheldon Cooper ("The Colonization Application").
Just to review, not only is this mission almost certain never to happen, but every major aspect of it collapses under scrutiny.
The funding goals are wildly unrealistic, the budget estimates are comically optimistic, and what little technology has actually been proposed is so badly designed that, according to an MIT study, it would be likely to kill all the colonists within a few months. I am pretty sure Howard would have pointed all of these things out to Sheldon.
You could also find some these objections in this piece from ABC, but you'd have to look closely because the reporters buried them as deep as possible, just far enough from the end to allow Mars One CEO/confidence man Bas Landorp have the last word.
Obviously this is a fun story, a lottery where anyone can become a colonist to Mars made even more dramatic by the twist of being a one-way trip. I also get that this is a story many probably most of us would like to believe. That is a high enough standard to justify a hook on a TV episode, but it is an embarrassingly low one for major news outlets.
[Update: Before posting, I try to follow up on all relevant links. This time I missed at least one. My apologies to Ms. Keep.]
There is a lot to complain about in the coverage of science and technology and, God knows, I do my share of bitching about the way the NYT et al. report on topics like driverless cars. Just to be clear, though, my complaints are generally meant to be focused on specific problems that tech journalists tend to overlook, usually involving issues like implementation, compatibility, scalability and infrastructure. For example, Google's autonomous car is a tremendous piece of engineering, but it currently requires road-data that cannot be gathered cheaply on a large scale. Google appears to have gotten stuck on this and a handful of other problems that effectively keep the technology from being commercially viable.
Most tech stories play out like that. They start with interesting, even promising ideas from smart, serious people, then the journalists covering them either choose to ignore or don't understand the subtleties and caveats. The researchers aren't always completely innocent here -- there's often a temptation to feed the hype -- but in their primary role they are doing respectable work.
Not all of these stories are cases of good research badly reported. Sometimes the rot goes all of the way down with lazy writers uncritically reporting bad technology and questionable science. Elmo Keep is neither lazy nor credulous. Writing for Medium, she has produced a devastating take-down of one of the most notable of these bullshit stories:
I will have to tell him that from everything I can find, Mars One doesn’t appear to be in any way qualified to carry off the biggest, most complex, most audacious, and most dangerous exploration mission in all of human history. That they don’t have the money to do it. That 200,000 people didn’t actually apply. That, with all the good faith one can muster, I wouldn’t classify it exactly as a scam—but that it seems to be, at best, an amazingly hubristic fantasy: an absolute faith in the free market, in technology, in the media, in money, to be able to somehow, magically, do what thousands of highly qualified people in government agencies have so far not yet been able to do over decades of diligently trying, making slow headway through individually hard-won breakthroughs, working in relative anonymity pursuing their life’s work.
I started to excerpt a few paragraphs of Keep's article but you really need to read the whole thing to grasp just how unlikely it is for this enterprise to go beyond the asking for money stage. Every single aspect collapses under scrutiny, from the unrealistic funding model to the wildly optimistic cost estimates to the nonexistent specs and contracts to the unresolved technical issues.
There is no excuse for a respectable news organization to treat this as a serious and yet we still get articles like this from Vibeke Venema and the BBC:
Could you leave everyone you love for the chance to settle on Mars? Sonia Van Meter describes herself as an "aspiring Martian" - she hopes to be one of the first humans on the planet in 10 years' time. But it would mean never seeing her husband again.
"I don't think you can apply for something like this and not be the tiniest bit insane," says Sonia Van Meter. "But this is the next great adventure, and I'm going to do absolutely anything I can to be a part of this."
The 35-year-old political consultant from Austin, Texas, is one of 705 people in the running to form a 20- to 40-strong human colony on Mars - a group whittled down from 200,000 who sent applications to Dutch not-for-profit organisation Mars One last year.
"I thought: 'Shoot, this sounds like fun!'" she says. "I didn't think there was the slightest chance that I would be selected, I just wanted to be a part of it."
For her husband Jason Stanford, her application - and the fact that she now appears to have a 35-to-one chance of leaving forever - evoked mixed emotions.
"Like any good red-blooded American male, at first I thought this was all about me. I thought: you're leaving me," he says.
Over time he changed his mind. "The more she talked about it, the more I realised she was doing this for the right reasons - she was doing this to show humanity what we can all do if we work together," he says.
There is one quick cover-your-ass 'if' buried deep in the piece ("The mission, if it goes ahead, will be dangerous, some say suicidal."), but even in that single brief sentence, the possibility of it not happening is just an aside. There is no real effort to put this in a realistic context. Instead, we're given figures like that 35-to-one chance; it's almost certainly false but it makes for a good story.
The press likes to maintain the convenient fiction that it is "open to all voices." This is an obviously absurd proposition – – even though the Internet has greatly expanded what news organizations like the BBC can offer, they can still only cover a tiny fraction of the information and opinions out there – – but it serves the purpose of absolving journalists and, more to the point, editors and publishers from taking responsibility for what they present to the public.
When something appears in a major news outlet, particularly when it is presented noncritically, that outlet is implicitly endorsing the story; it is, in effect, saying that this story is something important enough to spend time learning about. I have seen numerous stories on this proposed Mars One mission but Keep's article is the first of those to make any real effort to address the sheer silliness of the proposal.
