Mars One Is a “Money Grab” Where Everyone Loses
inverse.comMars One is like the Fire festival of space
Funny enough, when Mars One launched I happened to be at a conference that was sharing a venue with another conference on Mars planetology. It was great because of all the conversations it allowed us to start. However, I think about half the scientists I talked to agreed with my assessment that it was either a 2012-era social media pipe dream (e.g. Kony) or a scam.
I mean, pay to apply? Any company serious about this effort knows they should be chasing the handful of people mentally and physically capable of surviving timhis endeavor, not the other way around.
If they are actually spending their money on things to advance their cause then it is not a scam. It is likely an unwise enterprise and a terrible investment, but a scam is different...
Even the Chinese government called Mars One to be a scam [1], and advised their citizens to avoid the organization.
So when you've got China calling you out to be a fraud, then you must definitely be doing something wrong, in order for them to bother issuing a public statement like that.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/24/chinese_papers_bran...
EVEN the Chinese government? You say that like they're in business of scamming people. And honestly reading the original Chinese articles it doesn't look like an official government position or anything. It's just a newspaper that happens to be owned by the ruling party posting an article on things happening in the west.
I would suppose the commenter was referring to the fact that most of the business scams based on fake products (that us normal everyday people would be directly affected by) come from China.
And since the Chinese government has large stakes or outright ownership of those businesses, they are culpable in massive worldwide product scams. (I really don't think I need to link the news articles for this it's so pervasive).
What sense does that make?
Or, China could feel threatened by the project because they want to get to Mars first?
The best thing to come out of Mars One is the satirical ad campaign by the state of South Dakota. "Why die on Mars when you can live in South Dakota?"
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/21/news/economy/south-dakota-ma...
MO promotes the concept of going to Mars ... that seems to be its main raison d'etre.
Is it even still a thing?
MarsOne definitely introduced the concept of colonizing Mars to a wider audience. For that, I think, they get far less credit than they deserve.
No, no it didn’t. For one, this is the first time I’ve heard of it.
And more importantly, I think you are forgetting Robert Zubrin and Mars Direct:
"I didn't know about it therefore nobody did"
And your retort to the “more importantly” part?
Popularising an idea isn't accomplished 100% by the first person who tries. I love the Mars Direct plan and I even travelled to see Zubrin at a Mars Society convention, but the man is absolutely shit at PR.
There's definitely some bad with MarsOne, maybe it's mostly bad. But saying it's all bad is simplistic and ignorant of how public awareness is raised.
Sure, but I’ve seen news clips and Discovery channel specials and a bunch of other media. Most of them these days mention Elon, many many talk to or about Zubrin and their experiments (IIRC they just did a new one last fall?). If they dig deep enough they might even get Kim Stanley Robinson to answer a couple questions.
But I’ve never heard them talk about Mars One. Which makes me believe there’s a bubble and I’m not the one inside of it.
I have not forgotten about Zubrin of whom I am a big fan personally. The PR machinery that MarsOne kickstarted for a couple of years brought a ton of discussion about colonizing Mars that was very well worth it. It also galvanized a lot of support and brought people around the globe together that believed in humanity’s ‘next big step’
They are as likely to go to Mars as Elon musk so at least they are in rare company
I will be willing to bet that by 2040 SpaceX significantly helps send people to Mars, either by launching the people to orbit, launching a lot of the supplies (at least 40% by mass), building the Mars lander that lands people there, or even the whole-hog BFR/ITS architecture as Musk presented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA
Willing to bet a $beverage?
SpaceX has the largest (by payload) current launch vehicle in the world, and pioneered supersonic retropropulsion for landing (a critical technology for human-scale Mars landers) which they use to reduce the cost of space launch with most flights. They're the only US company that does regular orbital capsule flights (including reentry and recovery), and they're one of two US companies that will be flying people to orbit within about a year. Their Falcon 9, also one of the largest rockets in the world, launched more often to orbit than any other rocket (of any size) in the world last year. They're also currently building a reusable upper stage (which is also a human-scale Mars lander) for an even larger launch vehicle. If anybody is going to be landing people on Mars within the next couple decades, they'll most likely be at least substantially helped by SpaceX.
SpaceX is certainly in the best position of any private organization I know of to get to Mars, from the infrastructure perspective. But in terms of financing, the parent comment is right, Musk may not be a whole lot better off than Mars One in the big picture. A single manned mission to Mars could cost north of $100B, and the entire value of SpaceX is only about $20B. SpaceX is private, but estimates are that if it's profitable on an operating basis at all, it's only marginally so. Throw in Tesla's likely cash needs for the foreseeable future, and Musk may have some tough times coming. Money is going to decide the outcome here, not technology. Unless SpaceX finds some hugely profitable business to start generating cash (maybe their planned satellite constellation?), Mars is speculation.
I think you dramatically underestimate just how strong SpaceX's position is (especially relative to Tesla). SpaceX launched more than anyone else in the industry and doubled their nearest domestic competitor and arch-rival ULA last year (which has been bleeding people, by the way, and needs to retool for a totally new launch vehicle while supporting the safe shutdown and launch-out of 3 other launch vehicles). And not only is SpaceX out-launching them, but they've demonstrated practical reuse which builds a high moat around their launch business.
It's understandable if you haven't been following this very closely, as the situation has flipped dramatically in just about 2 or 3 years, even in spite of the failures during that time.
To give an example of Tesla:
Imagine Tesla was outproducing GM and Toyota combined, globally, and had also demonstrated level 5 self-driving Model 3s and Semis for the last couple years while readying to flip the switch on 300GW worth of solar to power their global supercharger network (powering tens of millions of cars) and power several medium-sized countries. That might be comparable to the situation SpaceX finds themselves in right now.
SpaceX is great, but having the highest launch rate in the industry does no good if they lose money on every one. Any more than Tesla would succeed if it outproduced GM and Toyota but lost money on every car.
Anyone who told you SpaceX was losing money on every launch was lying. SpaceX's cost per vehicle is among the lowest in the industry. And it's not just "but we work so hard that's why we're winning," it's due to a carefully designed rocket that is simply cheap to manufacture and has design features that allow you to hit economies of scale that are usually extremely rare in space launch. (And a lot of these things can be copied, but the people who are copying them are trying to compete in the far smaller smallsat market.)
Partly that's due to clustering: They produce hundreds of Merlins per year vs their competitors which only produce like a dozen or so (often less) engines per year, so just from the learning curve they can save a lot of money.
And unlike essentially every other rocket in the industry, the two stages are largely similar, using the same pressurization scheme, same propellants, same diameter tooling, just differing by the length and number of engines (the Merlin Vacuum engine is significantly different than the Merlin 1D sea level engine, but same underlying cycle type and same heritage), so it's almost like they only need to maintain half the production line as their competitors and get the economies of scale of producing more of the same thing. Also, they're reusing the vast majority of the hardware on roughly half their flights, now, which is, unhyperbolically, a game-changing development in commercial space launch.
SpaceX has a LOT going for them right now. Falcon 9 is a very inexpensive launcher given its performance.
The thing about rockets is that there's a huge advantage in having a higher launch rate. If you're not launching a lot, you're still paying most of your labor and facilities cost just to sit idle. And SpaceX, just producing a single rocket family that is launching more than anyone else in the world (and reusably), is at an enormous advantage there.
My point wasn't that SpaceX is actually losing money on every launch, only that the launch rate isn't the proper metric. The financial analyses I've seen online (eg, https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/11/will-spacex-earn-a...) conclude that the business is only marginally profitable, if at all. Musk could dispel the speculation by releasing the true financials. Until then, we only have limited information to go on, and that limited information points to slim-to-none profitability.
"Analysis" is a pretty bold word for what is in that article. And even there, they mention only 16 launches out of the 18 they achieved that year. That implies significantly more profit than in that article, whose entire analysis relies on, in its own words, "just a guess."
The limited information we have is that SpaceX is significantly profitable (their fairing recovery, Raptor, BFR, and potentially even parts of the satellite constellation efforts are funded out of their profits). They have one production line and are launching 18 times per year. Their nearest competitor is ULA, with 3 product lines (Delta IV Heavy, Delta II, and Atlas V) and with half as many annual launches and with no capability to reuse. That implies SpaceX's margin can be far greater than their competitors, the opposite of your guess.
In rocket launch, your profitability is determined primarily by your launch rate and your number of product lines as there are a lot of fixed costs for maintaining launch pads and manufacturing lines. SpaceX is doing extremely well on both fronts.
I'm always kind of mystified by comments like this, which I see a lot of. SpaceX has a cost target, and if they can't meet it, they aren't going to send humans to Mars. And that target's a lot less than $10B; most of the BFR engineering is not about Mars but about a fully-reusable launcher, which is useful for launching anything, not just going to Mars.
Don't fool yourself, there is a lot more to landing humans on Mars than building a big launch vehicle. The only data point we have is the Apollo project, and Mars is an order of magnitude more difficult. Apollo was around $150B in today's dollars, so if anything, the $100B estimate for Mars is low. Which at this point puts SpaceX closer to Mars One than it is to Mars itself.
The situation is wildly different. A half century of progress has been made, and SpaceX is taking a much more affordable approach to the whole thing.
We used expendable rockets for Apollo. And there were at least 6 different stages, depending on how you count (3 stages for the Saturn V, plus the command module which had a propulsion section and a reentry module plus the lunar module which had descent and ascent stages), all of which were expended. There were at least 3 different propellant combinations with even more engine types. All of these components were basically dedicated to the Apollo program and had to be paid out of that budget. Each mission requires the expenditure of all those stages.
The BFR for SpaceX, on the other hand, is just two stages. The two stages are very similar, using the same propellant type and basically the same engines. BFR will be used for satellite launches initially, so its development can be paid for separately. The advantage of BFR is that it is fully reusable, so you literally can use the same rocket to send stuff to Mars as is used for satellites. The biggest part, the booster, never needs to leave a few hundred kilometers from the launch site, and can be reused for satellite launches. SpaceX is able to get by with just two stages because they simply refuel the landable upper stage again and again instead of dropping stages. They're leveraging reuse not just to lower launch costs, but to dramatically simplify their mission architecture (and thus reduce development costs).
The reusable upper stage also serves as the lander, once refueled. And it is designed to be refueled by an essentially identical vehicle. And the lander itself can also be reused for the next Mars window. So in a single Mars mission, NOTHING needs to be expended, and at most you're just tying up a single stage during the duration of the mission; the rest of the architecture elements can earn their keep launching satellites while astronauts are on Mars.
Before SpaceX, launch costs for the US were around $20,000 per kilogram to LEO. SpaceX's F9 and Falcon Heavy have brought the cost down to around $1000-2000/kg. BFR, since it's fully reusable, could bring the costs down to $100/kg or even $10/kg. SpaceX designed an architecture that could reduce the cost to Mars by orders of magnitude and whose primary components can be developed and paid for the same way Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon are paid for (i.e. by delivering cargo for paying customers).
There are many good reasons to rationalize away the possible costs. But there are equally good reasons to believe we're underestimating the cost by not accounting for the unknown. Experience leads me to believe that the latter case is much more likely to be true, given the singular nature of a manned Mars mission.
Full disclosure, I love SpaceX and absolutely want to see them succeed. But we should be realistic about the challenges that Mars presents.
This isn't just rationalizing away possible costs.
I'd argue that we are more fully prepared for a human Mars mission now than we were for Apollo when Kennedy made his speech. We have decades of operational experience operating robotics on the planet and decades of on-orbit human spaceflight experience with durations of the same order of magnitude as a Mars mission. In contrast, the US had just shot someone on a suborbital flight into space by the time JFK gave his speech, and we had next to no understanding of the Moon's surface or long-duration human spaceflight.
I've thought intensely about Mars. I think a human Mars surface mission is easily within reach if the right architectural approach is used. SpaceX has a particularly good architectural approach. Using a reusable upper stage also as a tanker and a lander is a game-changer.
Scaling that up to a sustainable mass settlement initiative, on the other hand, is absolutely full of unknowns, as you say. That remains a crazy proposition without guarantee of success.
The first human mission is primarily about launch, entry/reentry, and logistics. SpaceX has a good handle on those and has retired a lot of risk by demonstrating supersonic retropropulsion (in a portion of the atmosphere approximating Martian conditions) and landing almost two dozen times, and I think SpaceX has a good plan to mitigate the rest of the risk.
EDIT:Another thing: SpaceX is building the lander and the rocket anyway and plan to pay for it just by switching over all their services from Falcon 9, Heavy, and Dragon. BFR is also big enough to serve as the transit hab and surface hab. So by just consolidating F9, FH, and Dragon to the BFR vehicle, they'll have 95% of the Mars architecture already built and paid for. The lone additional thing they need is ISRU: the mining equipment, the power production (primarily solar as it'll be cheapest), and the chemical plant. Chemical plant and solar are well-understood as both have been tested at small scale either on Mars or on ISS or similar, but the mining equipment only has some not-terribly-representative testing by scientific sample handling on the various landers and rovers of Mars. That is a question the first uncrewed mission will need to address.
I don't recall saying that all there was to landing humans on Mars was a big launch vehicle. Perhaps you're arguing with a straw man instead of the people you're replying to?
And that target's a lot less than $10B; most of the BFR engineering is not about Mars but about a fully-reusable launcher, which is useful for launching anything, not just going to Mars.
Sorry, I read your comment to read that you thought the cost would be much less (as little as their target of $10B), since they had already developed the launch vehicle.
If your point was just that if they can't do it for $10B, they won't, that may be valid but it's not the issue under discussion. We're talking about how likely it is that SpaceX will go to Mars, not whether SpaceX continues as a going concern.
> They are as likely to go to Mars as Elon musk so at least they are in rare company
While I've left your comment unvoted-upon, the downvotes are justified, in my view.
That said, I think Musk's optimism about Mars is pretty unjustified, but for reasons unrelated to launch vehicle technology, reasons that are shared by Mars One. The main reason is that we simply do not know how to sustain human life, in the long term, in less than 1 Earth gravity without deleterious effects, including the possible cessation of reproduction. This is to say nothing of the lower light levels on Mars, the rigors of designing CELSSs, the psychology of performing while never being able to go outside again (or possibly even never being able to return to Earth due to bone loss), and so on.
Musk has even said that the trip to Mars will be "fun" because you'll get to throw a ball around and play games in zero-g. He betrays a lack of serious engagement with the challenges of human spaceflight, to say nothing of the ongoing challenges of living on Mars. He understands the romance of gritting your teeth and eking out a living in a space Western, but not the realities of it. Mars One seems to share similar problems of vision.
Eventually, I think that, among other possibilities, either grown-ups will step in with regulation, or the grown-ups will stay away in droves from either project.
>The main reason is that we simply do not know how to sustain human life, in the long term, in less than 1 Earth gravity without deleterious effects, including the possible cessation of reproduction.
We do not know when the difficulty starts. Given our current knowledge, it is entirely possible that Martian gravity is sufficient for human health. We also know that even 0G is not acutely lethal (although the short term effects of returning to normal gravity are less then encouraging if we expect the people to be able to work as soon as they land on Mars).
This is just to say, we do not know how much of a problem Martian gravity is. There are still all of the difficulties we do know about.
It will probably be a long time (if ever) before we get a sustained "colony" on Mars, but humans setting foot on Mars is reasonably possible in the relatively near term. If we really wanted to, we could even make a "colony" simmilar to the ISS, where we have a permanantly staffed base, with a crew that stays for "short" (~year) time on Mars, combined with a year or two of total spaceflight.
I'm not remotely convinced this is worth doing. But it seems possible if we really wanted to do it.
> Eventually, I think that, among other possibilities, either grown-ups will step in with regulation, or the grown-ups will stay away in droves from either project.
...or Mars will be a place where there's only a few people living there for relatively short durations to do scientific research -- like Antarctica.