Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Humans May Only Survive 68 Days On Mars
Washington Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying...

By: Luke News

Excerpt from:
Humans May Only Survive 68 Days On Mars - Video

This article is about the one-way manned trip to Mars planned for 2024. For the first Soviet spacecraft for Mars, see Mars 1. For other uses, see Mars 1 (disambiguation).

Mars One is a not-for-profit organization based in the Netherlands that has put forward conceptual plans to establish a permanent human colony on Mars by 2025. The private spaceflight project is led by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, who announced plans for the Mars One mission in May 2012.[1]

Mars One's current concept includes launching four carefully selected applicants in a Mars-bound spaceflight in 2024, to become the first residents of Mars, and that every step of the crews journey will be documented for a reality television program.

Planning of Mars One already started in 2011 in discussions between the two founders, Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders. The feasibility of the idea was consequently researched with specialists and expert organizations, which discussed the financial, psychological and ethical aspects of it.[2]

Mars One initially publically announced plans for a one-way trip to Mars in May 2012, with a notional plan for an initial robotic precursor mission in 2016, and transporting the first human colonists to Mars in 2023.

The initial mission plan included:[3]

Mars One selected a second-round pool of astronaut candidates in 2013 of 1058 people"586 men and 472 women from 107 countries"from a larger number of some 200,000 who showed interest on the Mars One website.

In December 2013, Mars One announced plans for a robotic precursor mission in 2018, two years later than had been conceptually planned in the 2012 announcements. The robotic lander is to be "built by Lockheed Martin based on the design used for NASAs Phoenix and InSight missions, as well as a communications orbiter built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd."[7] Contracts started in late 2013 were merely study contracts, and plans have not been disclosed to raise the US$200 million or more needed to support the robotic mission.[7]

Mars One announced a partnership with Uwingu on 3 March 2014, stating that the program would use Uwingu's map of Mars in all of their planned missions.[8][9]Kristian von Bengtson began work on Simulation Mars Home for crew on 24 March 2014.

The second-round pool was whittled down to 705 candidates (418 men and 287 women) in the beginning of May 2014. 353 were removed either for medical reasons or due to personal considerations.[10] These selected persons will then begin the interview process following which several teams of two men and two women will be compiled. The teams will then begin training full-time for a future mission to Mars, while individuals and teams may be selected out during training if they are not deemed suitable for the mission.[10]

See more here:
Mars One - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTONSpace enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

Planet Mars. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

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Humans may only survive 68 days on Marsstudy

Organizers of a private Mars colonization effort may have to rethink their ambitious plans, a new study reports.

An analysis led by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has identified a few purported problems with the blueprint laid out by the Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2025 as the vanguard of a permanent settlement.

"We're not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible," study co-author Olivier de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, said in a statement. "But we do think it's not really feasible under the assumptions they've made. We're pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path." [Mars One's Red Planet Colony Project (Gallery)]

The Dutch nonprofit Mars One aims to land four colonists on the Red Planet in 2023. Do you want to be one of them?

The study team looked at many different aspects of the proposed Mars One mission, from the rockets needed to get gear to the Red Planet to the details of how settlers would grow their food. The results are sobering for would-be colonists, more than 200,000 of whom have applied to be a one-way Mars One astronaut. (There are no plans at the moment to bring the settlers back to Earth.)

For example, Mars One aims to source the colony's drinking water on-site by baking Red Planet soil, which is known to harbor water ice, at least in some locations. But the technology needed to do this is not yet ready to fly on a space mission, study authors said.

Furthermore, the new analysis suggests that growing crops within settlers' habitats, as Mars One envisions, would generate enough oxygen to make the living spaces a fire hazard.

Piping in nitrogen could lower the oxygen to safe levels, researchers said, but this fix would likely deprive the colony of a vital gas needed to compensate for leakage into the surrounding Martian atmosphere. The possible end result? A space that would quickly become unlivable, suffocating colonists after about 10 weeks, the study found.

There are ways to prevent this scenario growing food in isolated greenhouses, for example, or implementing an oxygen-extraction system. But the best alternative is to nix the idea of Mars farms and bring all the colony's food from Earth, the study determined.

"We found [that] carrying food is always cheaper than growing it locally," said study lead author Sydney Do, an MIT grad student. "On Mars, you need lighting and watering systems, and for lighting, we found it requires 875 LED [light-emitting diode] systems, which fail over time. So you need to provide spare parts for that, making the initial system heavier."

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Private Mars Colony Project May Not Be Feasible, Study Suggests

A team of MIT researchers has completed an analysis of the Mars One mission to colonize the Red Planet that throws the feasibility of the non-profit project into question. By analyzing the missions details, the team found that as the plan stands, there are a number of hurdles that must be overcome if the colonists aren't to end up dead within 10 weeks of landing.

Announced in 2012, The Mars One project aims at landing four colonists on Mars in 2025, where they would remain for the rest of their lives with additional colonists sent as Earth and Mars come back into the right launch position every 18 months or so. Living in habitats set up previously by unmanned rovers, the colonists would live off the land for their raw materials while being the focus of a reality television show beamed back to Earth.

Even though Mars Ones call for volunteers resulted in replies from 200,000 applicants, the feasibility of the mission remains an open question. In search of an answer, an MIT team developed a detailed settlement-analysis tool, which they used to carry out an assessment of the colonization plans. They used the plans, mission architecture, logistics, and assumptions proposed by Mars One, as well as the mission timeline and the intended use of existing technology. For comparison, the assessment used the International Space Stations (ISS) systems and operations as a model.

The end result is like a dash of cold water after the party for Mars One. According to MIT, the plans for the colony as outlined presents previously unforeseen shortcomings, will require technologies that dont yet exist, and will be much more expensive than previously thought.

For example, growing food for the colony is, in terms of space technology, like jumping from a window box to a commercial greenhouse in one go. The Mars One plan calls for 50 sq/m (538 sq/ft) of space for growing food. However, based on ISS data, MIT calculated that at least 200 sq/m (2,153 sq/ft) would be needed to grow a balanced diet of enough beans, lettuce, peanuts, potatoes, and rice at 3,040 calories per person per day to sustain four people.

By carefully packing crops in growing racks, MIT reckoned that this could be crammed into the planned habitat modules, but as the module used to grow food is also the living quarters for the colonists, that created other, potentially fatal, problems.

Unmanned pathfinder probe designed to precede the Mars One colonists (Image: Mars One)

Plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, which is a good thing, but having so many plants in such a small, confined space means that it soon becomes too much of a good thing. According to the MIT report, the oxygen produced would soon reach toxic levels and pose a massive fire hazard. To prevent this, air would need to be bled off and replaced with nitrogen gas to restore the balance, but that would soon use up the entire store of nitrogen allocated for the colony.

Worse than this, the habitat pods aren't perfectly airtight. They inevitably leak air, and without nitrogen to maintain pressure, the modules would soon lose so much air that the crew would suffocate in 68 days after arrival on Mars.

Though tanking oxygen from Earth is a possibility, that still leaves the problem of air leakage, which would make the habitat pod uninhabitable in about a year and a half. MIT says that this could be offset by collecting nitrogen on Mars and separating out the oxygen from the habitat for storage, but such a system would be extremely heavy and none are space rated.

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MIT team throws feasibility of Mars One mission into question

Colonizing Marshas long represented one of the more ambitious dreams for space travelproponents ranging from NASA scientists to Silicon Valley entrepreneur and SpaceX founderElon Musk. The latter also envisions sending humans to Mars sometimes in the next several decades, and has mused about how to build a Mars colony population of 1 million people in anAeoninterview.

Mars One a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands shares some of the Musks goals and indeed, the Mars One vision relies on Musks SpaceXs Falcon Heavy rocket. ButMars Onesconcept of seeding Mars with human colonies by launchingone-way missions recently received some close scrutiny from a team of MIT researchers.

The MIT teams critique identified potential challenges and estimated that settling thefirst batch of Mars colonists would require about 15 launches of the Falcon Heavy rocket being developed by Musks firm SpaceX at a cost of $4.5 billion. MIT also suggestedthat Mars Onemay want to dial back itsaggressive schedule of sending four-person crews every 26 months starting in 2024.

The MIT paper took a particularly close look at the Mars One idea that it could establish a sustainable colony on Mars using existing technology starting in the 2020s, according toSpace Policy Online. MITs researchers concluded that Mars One was overreaching with its statement that no new major developments or inventions are neededto make such an effort possible. In a Reddit AMA, they also urged Mars One to take a slower-paced approach that field-testedall the necessary habitat equipment on the red planet before sending humans.

We believe this is a time for boldness in space exploration, but there is also a necessary amount of caution, said MITs team, a groupoverseen byOlivier de Weck, an aeronautics and astronautics engineer at MIT.A catastrophe in the early days of Martian colonization may cripple the endeavor in todays risk-averse society.

In 2012, Mars Onefirst proposed sendingMars settlers on a one-way trip to the red planet starting in 2024 a project based on the idea of making such a Mars endeavor into a multimedia reality show. Mars One also envisions first sending robotic missions to set up the crew habitat between 2018 and 2023, before the first humans ever set foot on the red planet.

MITssimulation of the Mars One mission plan highlighted a few areas in particular.

First, the study found that thecost of the permanent colony would grow steadily over time because of the increasing requirement for spare parts spares would account for an estimated 62 percent of mass transported to Mars after almost 11 years of settlement.

Second, the studyidentified a potentialproblem of managing excessive oxygen levels if the Mars One effort grew all its food as crops on the red planet.

Third, it pointed out thatcarrying all food from Earth could bemore efficient than growing Mars crops because of Martian agricultures equipment requirement.

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Will Humans Start Colonizing Mars in Ten Years?

WASHINGTON: Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says. Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024. A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor. But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible, for now at least. The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project. Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said. Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded. Shipping in replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion. Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem. The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running, he told Popular Science magazine. But he claimed the researchers used incomplete data, adding that technology for Mars colonization was nearly ready. While oxygen removal has never been done in space, I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars, Lansdorp told AFP. Of course, the actual apparatus that we will take to Mars still needs to be designed and tested extensively, but the technology is already there. Many people have voiced doubts about the mission, though the project has won support from Gerard t Hooft, the Dutch 1999 Nobel Physics prize winner. The Red Planet lies at least 55 million kms from Earth and it would take a minimum of seven months to get there. Last June, the entertainment company Endemol, a major reality television producer, agreed to film the participants as they prepared for the move to Mars.

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Humans may only survive for 68 days on Red Planet

WASHINGTON Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait. Conditions on the red planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to fall after about two months, and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based nonprofit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the planet starting in 2024.

A short list of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible for now.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on the oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

Shipping replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

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Humans may only survive 68 days on Mars: study

The Mars One Foundation's plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is judged unrealistic.

The Mars One Foundation's ambitious plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is an unrealistic goal given current technology levels, according to a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate engineering students.

Most troubling for the tens of thousands of would-be Mars colonists who've applied with the foundation, lead author Sydney Do wrote that growing crops in a Mars habitat would quickly "produce unsafe oxygen levels."

Do, along with colleagues Koki Ho, Samuel Schreiner, Andrew Owens, and Olivier de Weck, published an assessment of the Mars One program's timetable and likelihood of success, presenting the paper at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto.

The Mars One Foundation, a non-profit based in the Netherlands, held an open casting call for would-be Mars colonists last summer, with the idea of forming a 40-candidate group that would begin training in 2015 for a series of colonizing missions launching in about a decade. More than 100,000 people from around the globe applied, according to the foundation, including 30,000 Americans.

Mars One founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp claimed last year that it would cost in the neighborhood of $6 billion to send the first four-person crew to Mars, with additional colonists sent later.

The good news for Mars One is that Do and his colleagues think that first mission could be done for even cheaper.

"The space logistics analysis revealed that, for the best scenario considered, establishing the first crew fora Mars settlement will require approximately 15 Falcon Heavy launchers and require $4.5 billion in funding," the MIT students wrote.

Unfortunately, that's about the only positive about the Mars One program in the researchers' paper, titled "An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan."

Do and his colleagues figure the cost of maintaining the Mars colony while adding additional colonists would grow and grow, perhaps prohibitively. Though the colonists would presumably try to utilize Martian materials as much as possible, the graduate students estimated that only 8 percent of the colony's needs would be met by in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).

Continued here:
MIT Students Bash Mars Colonization Plan

Space enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the Endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

Shipping in replacement parts is an additional challenge and will likely boost the cost of the mission, which the researchers estimated to be at least $4.5 billion.

Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending spare parts to Mars could pose a problem.

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