8 ms·

All Dressed Up for Mars and Nowhere to Go

126 points by zvanness 12y ago

kalms 12y ago
This is one exceptionally well-written article.
- benastan 12y ago
  The illustrations and structure added a lot as well!
CapitalistCartr 12y ago
To send actual humans to the surface of Mars requires several robotic missions first to prepare. If we expect to make fuel for the return journey there, that needs to be happening before the people leave Earth orbit. Ditto for digging the hole and putting in an underground habitat. Building a greenhouse from glass made on Mars. Growing actual food on the surface. Each of these steps are critical and need testing before we send people. Otherwise it's a pointless test to find out which failure gets them first.
- randallsquared 12y ago
  > If we expect to make fuel for the return journey there The folks in this article do not plan a return journey.
- Osmium 12y ago
  How about, before all that, we try and inhabit, say, deserts on Earth first? Make that psychologically and economically feasible first. To my knowledge, we are yet to successfully demonstrate that we can maintain a viable, materially-closed ecosystem, without having to worry about extra things we'd encounter on Mars like pressure and temperature differentials and excess radiation. I am all for Mars, 100%. The sooner the better. But it's not like Earth doesn't have its own inhospitable climates that are vastly easier to conquer than Mars, and we haven't even managed that (but then, perhaps there's just not enough motivation?).
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    We already comfortably inhabit a desert, we call it Los Angleles :-) Perhaps a better example is the underground city of Australia, Coober Pedy. Non self-sustaining examples exist in the Antarctic as well. The point being, Earth has hard to live in places, but not a lot of motivation for living in those places. Mars as a sort of sex appeal to it "Mars!" but its a valid question what happens once people figure out that its just a place that is really really far away from Walmart.
    - jordanpg 12y ago
      I think the point is not that it is technologically infeasible to live in deserts, but that doing it years with only what you can fit in a capsule the size of a U-Haul or dig out of the ground (with a drill you brought with you in the U-Haul) is extremely difficult. And, that no one has demonstrated how that can be turned into a positive, long-term revenue stream, even in principle.
      - ChuckMcM 12y ago
        Camping in the Sierras as I have done over the years has lead to seeing a lot of mining towns. And a mining town in the 19th century was a modest analog of a Mars colony in that they made most of their own tools out of locally available material, lived off food that could be sourced locally, and had few support structures outside of their own ingenuity. The argument that presumably robotic missions would pre-supply a landing site with materials that could not be locally sourced, tools for processing locally sourced materials into useful form (including but not limited to air/water). Puts what is left being there for the hell of it. Failed earth experiments like the Biosphere ones depended primarily on self containment (good for when you are surrounded by vacuum), successful experiments like the Russian 'mobile home from hell' [1], and some things in the middle like 'earth ships'[2] actually point to feasibility. What is lacking is the certainty that you will die if this doesn't work. And that, is pretty hard to simulate on Earth because there is always an "option" of some sort for rescue. [1] http://www.space.com/13500-mock-mars-mission-mars-500-ends.html http://www.space.com/13500-mock-mars-mission-mars-500-ends.h... [2] http://earthship.com/ http://earthship.com/
- Narishma 12y ago
  The fact that there is no return journey planned makes a lot of stuff much simpler.
Schweigi 12y ago
Well written article! As much as I would like to but I think it will probably never happen in the near future. Not because of technical reasons as some people state in the article. In my opinion the technical difficulties are not the most difficult things to solve in order to travel to Mars. Humanity went basically from 0 to space and on the Moon but this was only possible because of the political pressure where everything was dedicated to reach this goal. This included a lot of money and ten thousands of people. But most important it was the society who supported this goal no matter what. Today nobody really cares if people go to space and this makes it impossible for a hand full of people who do.
- jordanpg 12y ago
  I agree. Barring some economic windfall that hasn't yet been discovered, it will require a national (world?) crisis and a Manhattan/Apollo project for a project on this scale. And the $6B pricetag is ludicrous. To put this in context, the state of California estimates the cost of high-speed rail from SF to LA at ~$50B.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Yeah fine, and everyone at SpaceX DEVELOPED the rockets that take people to SPACE for the same as what Facebook paid for Snapchat. Valuations are WEIRD. Further the $50B price tag has a lot to do with paying a LOT of union folks, legalized "corruption" in many forms and the like. Finding huge cost savings in the construction industry is possible if you're motivated but nobody is because big infrastructure projects like that get handed out more based on politics than merit.
    - moheeb 12y ago
      You mention paying union folks like it is a bad thing, in line with "legalized "corruption"". Perhaps you should go work in a foundry, machine shop, or a mine for a while and then see how you feel about unions.
      - 12y ago
MrZongle2 12y ago
First: I thought this was a well-written article. Second: although it is definitely not something I would seriously consider, I can appreciate that there are some people out there who are in fine mental health and would eagerly go on a one-way trip to Mars. But third, when I read this: Before he’d applied for Mars One, Josh had met a girl at the Redhead Days festival in the Netherlands. Eli did not have red hair, but was brunette; Josh was drawn to her easygoing demeanor, her effortless good moods, and they fell very much in love. But a shot at Mars would be a serious, life-changing turn of events, and Josh knew that he would have to fully commit if he was ever going to make it to the final selection. He didn’t even wait for the application deadline to break it off. ...I concluded that Josh was an idiot. Not for wanting to go on a one-way trip to Mars, not because of any career or lifestyle decisions he had made, but simply because he sabotaged his potential happiness based upon a promise of something exciting happening, made by people a world away that he had never met and who seemed to have a dubious command of the critical technical details of such an undertaking. Ten years from now, when Josh is still on Earth, Mars One is considered to be another Biosphere 2 and Bas Landsorp and his pals have long since moved on to other commercial ventures, I suspect Josh will wonder about that brunette.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  I strongly suspect Josh knows exactly what he's doing, even if it's not exactly what he's saying he's doing.
  - marvin 12y ago
    Yep. He sounds like a really fascinating character, but it seems to me like Mars is not really the key motivation in his life. He sounds like he's running away from something. I hope everything works out for him in the end.
- johnloeber 12y ago
  I felt sorry for Josh as well. He seemed like a well-meaning, overly optimistic fool, giving up real, potential happiness for an illusion, a wonderful fantasy, a pipe dream.
drivers99 12y ago
> How the colonists might cope with a deficiency in vitamin A from a lack of sunlight, however, is. Don't they mean vitamin D?
- recycleme 12y ago
  I believe so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D
hvs 12y ago
The point about the overabundance of oxygen (from the plants) that would require venting, but limited nitrogen, which would ultimately result in suffocation is one of those great little details that you don't normally think about when you think about living on other planets. There is so much we take for granted living day to day on a planet that we've evolved in concert with, that it's easy to overlook the little (and big) details that are so important for life to exist.
- nickff 12y ago
  This problem has been solved, and machines capable of separating gasses exist all over the world; they are commonly used in hospitals to provide oxygen to patients, and for various other purposes.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_separation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_separation
  - dded 12y ago
    How often do these machines need spare parts? And how much power do they consume to operate?
austinz 12y ago
When they explain to me how ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) can fabricate a replacement for a blown microchip or a refrigerator's compressor - based only on the equipment you can bring to Mars in a couple of space capsules - I'll be ready to begin seeing Mars One as something other than an insane pipe dream. This article nails it: these people would be living an 18th-century lifestyle. But it would be one utterly dependent on 21st-century technology for something as basic as breathable air. If their 18th-century lifestyle can't keep their 21st-century technology working, and the organizing company can't drum up enough money to send regular resupply flights for decades to come, they die. Simple as that.
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  It's like a time machine that kills everyone as soon as the time machine breaks.
twelfthnight 12y ago
"Gravity on Mars is only 38% that of Earth’s. What this would mean for the long-term health of colonists on Mars is not known" I think this fact is often overlooked. The problem of gravity (and radiation) are probably harder to overcome than food and oxygen.
- nickff 12y ago
  This kind of argument was made early and often in the late 1950s, with respect to zero gravity, and it proved to be fear-mongering. Without evidence for this sort of proposition, it is simply pessimistic speculation. This piece was not well researched, please do not invest too much credence in it.
  - pbh101 12y ago
    To this day astronauts need to spend good amounts of time exercising during long stints in zero-g aboard ISS to avoid significant bone loss. Of course, maybe if you never leave Mars, you would be just fine with the bone density/strength you have.
    - nickff 12y ago
      Citing specific problems can be instructive, and I would agree that bone and muscle mass loss could prove very bad. My issue is with nebulous claims that 'anything could happen'. I would add that the bone and muscle problems are very well known to just about everyone who has done as much as read a science fiction book. Heinlein went into the subject in detail in his 1966 novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and more recent writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson have written about it too.
      - andyjohnson0 12y ago
        It is worth remembering that Heinlein and KSR are writers of fiction, which tends to gloss-over difficult problems in favour of pleasing stories. Neither were/are scientists, although Heinlein had an engineering degree, and it would be inadvisable to rely on their work. In 1966 the space endurance record was just under 14 days (Gemini 7) and very little was known about the long-term effects of low gravity environments at that time.
nickff 12y ago
This piece is quite an interesting read, as well as being well structured and well phrased. This makes it all the more unfortunate that the writer is obviously unfamiliar with the technologies which would be used, and the realities of aerospace projects; leading to a slew of errors. Some of the errors include: 1) Separating oxygen from nitrogen is quite commonly done, and there are at least three distinct methods for doing it. The reference is to an amateurish analysis done by others who had not done any research. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_swing_adsorption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_swing_adsorption 2) It is quite well known that NASA distributes its contracts around the country, so as to increase political buy-in from governors, congressmen, and senators. In fact, the space shuttle was green-lit because Nixon had cancelled the national aerospace plane, and his administration had a meeting about how that would affect votes in key swing-states, and they decided that the shuttle would benefit his re-election effort. Sources are numerous including https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw . 3) Vitamin D would be a problem from lack of sunlight, not vitamin A, and even then supplements and artificial lamps both provide viable long-term alternatives to sun-exposure. 4) Building a vehicle to carry sufficient fuel and supplies for the trip to Mars is not especially technically challenging, when compared to the design of an earth-entry vehicle. Earth orbit rendezvous allows for the assembly of massive (though expensive) space vehicles such as the ISS.
- abraxas7 12y ago
  I worked in industrial nitrogen/oxegen generator provider, and it is not really rocket science to do this. All we had to do was finding optimized pressure and substance for gas distillation.
- dded 12y ago
  To your point (3), perhaps it is reasonable to bring a lifetime's supply of vitamin supplements for four people. But with an artificial lamp you would have to worry about bulbs burning out (how many would you need?), and the lamps would consume a significant part of what would have to be a limited power supply in the colony. To your point (4), that there may exist an even more difficult problem does not mean that building a Mars vehicle is "not especially technically challenging." The author explicitly cites the three recent malfunctions with rocket launches, and the older Apollo, Soyuz, and Shuttle programs all had their difficulties too. Building a Mars vehicle is surely challenging.
anonimancio 12y ago
If that is the intellectual level of the applicants, they have far worse problems than radiation and food.
cromag 12y ago
A well written article, interspersed with great art. Makes me wonder why he published it on Medium of all places. This article deserved better. The author deserves recognition.
bakhy 12y ago
Aside from all the serious problems, their puny budget being probably the biggest, what always bugged me was the reality show aspect... What an ugly way to even think about achieving such a great feat. Are they picking their candidates like Big Brother does, with the egos and sex appeal? Will there be fighting? Sex? I mean, if the viewers get bored, and this will be a pretty long show with a pretty small cast, what happens then? And how will people even react to watching someone die in a "show" like this? Wouldn't this actually be the most perverse form of human exploitation ever conceived?.. I don't think this nasty idea even deserves this much work to write about it. I'm sorry for Josh, but I hope they do not succeed. I do not want to see the horror that this could turn into. Let's not mar space and Mars with this bullshit.
- rybosome 12y ago
  This is an excellent point; reality-show-manufactured drama would rob this achievement of the gravitas it deserves. Humans are given to pettiness on occasion, it would be a tragedy to elevate and preserve those petty moments when memorializing a new human epoch.
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    "reality-show-manufactured drama would rob this achievement of the gravitas it deserves" Worse, it risks completely ruining the idea of human space exploration and planetary colonisation.
- lnanek2 12y ago
  It's nice to be an idealist like that, but like the capitalism vs. communism argument - when they made water free in Cuba, people just left the taps running. In reality, media like movies, games, and reality TV make massive amounts of money. If that money is spend on improving space technology instead of just sending people to a remote island to watch them suffer, it is a clear win, and doesn't take trying to force people to match your idealist image.
ridgeguy 12y ago
For anyone interested in a good, intense read about surviving alone on Mars, I highly recommend Andy Weir's "The Martian". Fiction (for awhile, anyway) based on science & engineering & human behavior. Don't start it on an evening when you can't stay up all night!
- hexwab 12y ago
  Seconded.
travisl12 12y ago
We are no where near ready to go to Mars. What would the impact on the public's psyche be if this mission failed by means of a torturously slow death of the crew? I think it'd be a huge setback for any sort of space exploration to witness fellow humans triumphantly land on Mars and then watch it all fall apart and the crew perishes tragically (being optimistic enough to say they actually land safely). I bet the Apollo program would have ended much sooner if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never made it off of the Moon. I have always thought as Cmd. Hadfield stated, that we have to go to the Moon and get it right there first. Go to the Moon, get this space colonization thing figured out and then the conversation on heading to Mars can begin.
nazgulnarsil 12y ago
This article is like a laundry list of what's wrong with my generation. Whiny, cynical, woefully uninformed but happy to share technical reasons why something won't work.

126 points by zvanness 12y ago

kalms 12y ago

This is one exceptionally well-written article.

benastan 12y ago
The illustrations and structure added a lot as well!

CapitalistCartr 12y ago

To send actual humans to the surface of Mars requires several robotic missions first to prepare. If we expect to make fuel for the return journey there, that needs to be happening before the people leave Earth orbit. Ditto for digging the hole and putting in an underground habitat. Building a greenhouse from glass made on Mars. Growing actual food on the surface. Each of these steps are critical and need testing before we send people. Otherwise it's a pointless test to find out which failure gets them first.

randallsquared 12y ago
> If we expect to make fuel for the return journey there The folks in this article do not plan a return journey.
Osmium 12y ago
How about, before all that, we try and inhabit, say, deserts on Earth first? Make that psychologically and economically feasible first. To my knowledge, we are yet to successfully demonstrate that we can maintain a viable, materially-closed ecosystem, without having to worry about extra things we'd encounter on Mars like pressure and temperature differentials and excess radiation. I am all for Mars, 100%. The sooner the better. But it's not like Earth doesn't have its own inhospitable climates that are vastly easier to conquer than Mars, and we haven't even managed that (but then, perhaps there's just not enough motivation?).
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  We already comfortably inhabit a desert, we call it Los Angleles :-) Perhaps a better example is the underground city of Australia, Coober Pedy. Non self-sustaining examples exist in the Antarctic as well. The point being, Earth has hard to live in places, but not a lot of motivation for living in those places. Mars as a sort of sex appeal to it "Mars!" but its a valid question what happens once people figure out that its just a place that is really really far away from Walmart.
  - jordanpg 12y ago
    I think the point is not that it is technologically infeasible to live in deserts, but that doing it years with only what you can fit in a capsule the size of a U-Haul or dig out of the ground (with a drill you brought with you in the U-Haul) is extremely difficult. And, that no one has demonstrated how that can be turned into a positive, long-term revenue stream, even in principle.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      Camping in the Sierras as I have done over the years has lead to seeing a lot of mining towns. And a mining town in the 19th century was a modest analog of a Mars colony in that they made most of their own tools out of locally available material, lived off food that could be sourced locally, and had few support structures outside of their own ingenuity. The argument that presumably robotic missions would pre-supply a landing site with materials that could not be locally sourced, tools for processing locally sourced materials into useful form (including but not limited to air/water). Puts what is left being there for the hell of it. Failed earth experiments like the Biosphere ones depended primarily on self containment (good for when you are surrounded by vacuum), successful experiments like the Russian 'mobile home from hell' [1], and some things in the middle like 'earth ships'[2] actually point to feasibility. What is lacking is the certainty that you will die if this doesn't work. And that, is pretty hard to simulate on Earth because there is always an "option" of some sort for rescue. [1] http://www.space.com/13500-mock-mars-mission-mars-500-ends.html http://www.space.com/13500-mock-mars-mission-mars-500-ends.h... [2] http://earthship.com/ http://earthship.com/
Narishma 12y ago
The fact that there is no return journey planned makes a lot of stuff much simpler.

Schweigi 12y ago

Well written article! As much as I would like to but I think it will probably never happen in the near future. Not because of technical reasons as some people state in the article. In my opinion the technical difficulties are not the most difficult things to solve in order to travel to Mars. Humanity went basically from 0 to space and on the Moon but this was only possible because of the political pressure where everything was dedicated to reach this goal. This included a lot of money and ten thousands of people. But most important it was the society who supported this goal no matter what. Today nobody really cares if people go to space and this makes it impossible for a hand full of people who do.

jordanpg 12y ago
I agree. Barring some economic windfall that hasn't yet been discovered, it will require a national (world?) crisis and a Manhattan/Apollo project for a project on this scale. And the $6B pricetag is ludicrous. To put this in context, the state of California estimates the cost of high-speed rail from SF to LA at ~$50B.
- msandford 12y ago
  Yeah fine, and everyone at SpaceX DEVELOPED the rockets that take people to SPACE for the same as what Facebook paid for Snapchat. Valuations are WEIRD. Further the $50B price tag has a lot to do with paying a LOT of union folks, legalized "corruption" in many forms and the like. Finding huge cost savings in the construction industry is possible if you're motivated but nobody is because big infrastructure projects like that get handed out more based on politics than merit.
  - moheeb 12y ago
    You mention paying union folks like it is a bad thing, in line with "legalized "corruption"". Perhaps you should go work in a foundry, machine shop, or a mine for a while and then see how you feel about unions.
    - 12y ago

MrZongle2 12y ago

First: I thought this was a well-written article. Second: although it is definitely not something I would seriously consider, I can appreciate that there are some people out there who are in fine mental health and would eagerly go on a one-way trip to Mars. But third, when I read this: Before he’d applied for Mars One, Josh had met a girl at the Redhead Days festival in the Netherlands. Eli did not have red hair, but was brunette; Josh was drawn to her easygoing demeanor, her effortless good moods, and they fell very much in love. But a shot at Mars would be a serious, life-changing turn of events, and Josh knew that he would have to fully commit if he was ever going to make it to the final selection. He didn’t even wait for the application deadline to break it off. ...I concluded that Josh was an idiot. Not for wanting to go on a one-way trip to Mars, not because of any career or lifestyle decisions he had made, but simply because he sabotaged his potential happiness based upon a promise of something exciting happening, made by people a world away that he had never met and who seemed to have a dubious command of the critical technical details of such an undertaking. Ten years from now, when Josh is still on Earth, Mars One is considered to be another Biosphere 2 and Bas Landsorp and his pals have long since moved on to other commercial ventures, I suspect Josh will wonder about that brunette.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
I strongly suspect Josh knows exactly what he's doing, even if it's not exactly what he's saying he's doing.
- marvin 12y ago
  Yep. He sounds like a really fascinating character, but it seems to me like Mars is not really the key motivation in his life. He sounds like he's running away from something. I hope everything works out for him in the end.
johnloeber 12y ago
I felt sorry for Josh as well. He seemed like a well-meaning, overly optimistic fool, giving up real, potential happiness for an illusion, a wonderful fantasy, a pipe dream.

drivers99 12y ago

> How the colonists might cope with a deficiency in vitamin A from a lack of sunlight, however, is. Don't they mean vitamin D?

recycleme 12y ago
I believe so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D

hvs 12y ago

The point about the overabundance of oxygen (from the plants) that would require venting, but limited nitrogen, which would ultimately result in suffocation is one of those great little details that you don't normally think about when you think about living on other planets. There is so much we take for granted living day to day on a planet that we've evolved in concert with, that it's easy to overlook the little (and big) details that are so important for life to exist.

nickff 12y ago
This problem has been solved, and machines capable of separating gasses exist all over the world; they are commonly used in hospitals to provide oxygen to patients, and for various other purposes.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_separation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_separation
- dded 12y ago
  How often do these machines need spare parts? And how much power do they consume to operate?

austinz 12y ago

When they explain to me how ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) can fabricate a replacement for a blown microchip or a refrigerator's compressor - based only on the equipment you can bring to Mars in a couple of space capsules - I'll be ready to begin seeing Mars One as something other than an insane pipe dream. This article nails it: these people would be living an 18th-century lifestyle. But it would be one utterly dependent on 21st-century technology for something as basic as breathable air. If their 18th-century lifestyle can't keep their 21st-century technology working, and the organizing company can't drum up enough money to send regular resupply flights for decades to come, they die. Simple as that.

thisjepisje 12y ago
It's like a time machine that kills everyone as soon as the time machine breaks.

twelfthnight 12y ago

"Gravity on Mars is only 38% that of Earth’s. What this would mean for the long-term health of colonists on Mars is not known" I think this fact is often overlooked. The problem of gravity (and radiation) are probably harder to overcome than food and oxygen.

nickff 12y ago
This kind of argument was made early and often in the late 1950s, with respect to zero gravity, and it proved to be fear-mongering. Without evidence for this sort of proposition, it is simply pessimistic speculation. This piece was not well researched, please do not invest too much credence in it.
- pbh101 12y ago
  To this day astronauts need to spend good amounts of time exercising during long stints in zero-g aboard ISS to avoid significant bone loss. Of course, maybe if you never leave Mars, you would be just fine with the bone density/strength you have.
  - nickff 12y ago
    Citing specific problems can be instructive, and I would agree that bone and muscle mass loss could prove very bad. My issue is with nebulous claims that 'anything could happen'. I would add that the bone and muscle problems are very well known to just about everyone who has done as much as read a science fiction book. Heinlein went into the subject in detail in his 1966 novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and more recent writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson have written about it too.
    - andyjohnson0 12y ago
      It is worth remembering that Heinlein and KSR are writers of fiction, which tends to gloss-over difficult problems in favour of pleasing stories. Neither were/are scientists, although Heinlein had an engineering degree, and it would be inadvisable to rely on their work. In 1966 the space endurance record was just under 14 days (Gemini 7) and very little was known about the long-term effects of low gravity environments at that time.

nickff 12y ago

This piece is quite an interesting read, as well as being well structured and well phrased. This makes it all the more unfortunate that the writer is obviously unfamiliar with the technologies which would be used, and the realities of aerospace projects; leading to a slew of errors. Some of the errors include: 1) Separating oxygen from nitrogen is quite commonly done, and there are at least three distinct methods for doing it. The reference is to an amateurish analysis done by others who had not done any research. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_swing_adsorption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_swing_adsorption 2) It is quite well known that NASA distributes its contracts around the country, so as to increase political buy-in from governors, congressmen, and senators. In fact, the space shuttle was green-lit because Nixon had cancelled the national aerospace plane, and his administration had a meeting about how that would affect votes in key swing-states, and they decided that the shuttle would benefit his re-election effort. Sources are numerous including https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8v7juSgRw . 3) Vitamin D would be a problem from lack of sunlight, not vitamin A, and even then supplements and artificial lamps both provide viable long-term alternatives to sun-exposure. 4) Building a vehicle to carry sufficient fuel and supplies for the trip to Mars is not especially technically challenging, when compared to the design of an earth-entry vehicle. Earth orbit rendezvous allows for the assembly of massive (though expensive) space vehicles such as the ISS.

abraxas7 12y ago
I worked in industrial nitrogen/oxegen generator provider, and it is not really rocket science to do this. All we had to do was finding optimized pressure and substance for gas distillation.
dded 12y ago
To your point (3), perhaps it is reasonable to bring a lifetime's supply of vitamin supplements for four people. But with an artificial lamp you would have to worry about bulbs burning out (how many would you need?), and the lamps would consume a significant part of what would have to be a limited power supply in the colony. To your point (4), that there may exist an even more difficult problem does not mean that building a Mars vehicle is "not especially technically challenging." The author explicitly cites the three recent malfunctions with rocket launches, and the older Apollo, Soyuz, and Shuttle programs all had their difficulties too. Building a Mars vehicle is surely challenging.

anonimancio 12y ago

If that is the intellectual level of the applicants, they have far worse problems than radiation and food.

cromag 12y ago

A well written article, interspersed with great art. Makes me wonder why he published it on Medium of all places. This article deserved better. The author deserves recognition.

bakhy 12y ago

Aside from all the serious problems, their puny budget being probably the biggest, what always bugged me was the reality show aspect... What an ugly way to even think about achieving such a great feat. Are they picking their candidates like Big Brother does, with the egos and sex appeal? Will there be fighting? Sex? I mean, if the viewers get bored, and this will be a pretty long show with a pretty small cast, what happens then? And how will people even react to watching someone die in a "show" like this? Wouldn't this actually be the most perverse form of human exploitation ever conceived?.. I don't think this nasty idea even deserves this much work to write about it. I'm sorry for Josh, but I hope they do not succeed. I do not want to see the horror that this could turn into. Let's not mar space and Mars with this bullshit.

rybosome 12y ago
This is an excellent point; reality-show-manufactured drama would rob this achievement of the gravitas it deserves. Humans are given to pettiness on occasion, it would be a tragedy to elevate and preserve those petty moments when memorializing a new human epoch.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  "reality-show-manufactured drama would rob this achievement of the gravitas it deserves" Worse, it risks completely ruining the idea of human space exploration and planetary colonisation.
lnanek2 12y ago
It's nice to be an idealist like that, but like the capitalism vs. communism argument - when they made water free in Cuba, people just left the taps running. In reality, media like movies, games, and reality TV make massive amounts of money. If that money is spend on improving space technology instead of just sending people to a remote island to watch them suffer, it is a clear win, and doesn't take trying to force people to match your idealist image.

ridgeguy 12y ago

For anyone interested in a good, intense read about surviving alone on Mars, I highly recommend Andy Weir's "The Martian". Fiction (for awhile, anyway) based on science & engineering & human behavior. Don't start it on an evening when you can't stay up all night!

hexwab 12y ago
Seconded.

travisl12 12y ago

We are no where near ready to go to Mars. What would the impact on the public's psyche be if this mission failed by means of a torturously slow death of the crew? I think it'd be a huge setback for any sort of space exploration to witness fellow humans triumphantly land on Mars and then watch it all fall apart and the crew perishes tragically (being optimistic enough to say they actually land safely). I bet the Apollo program would have ended much sooner if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never made it off of the Moon. I have always thought as Cmd. Hadfield stated, that we have to go to the Moon and get it right there first. Go to the Moon, get this space colonization thing figured out and then the conversation on heading to Mars can begin.

nazgulnarsil 12y ago

This article is like a laundry list of what's wrong with my generation. Whiny, cynical, woefully uninformed but happy to share technical reasons why something won't work.