The first Mars One colonists will suffocate, starve, and be incinerated, according to MIT

In the 2020s, Mars One essentially a Dutch-made extraplanetary reality TV show willsend amateur astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars. Their attempts to colonize the Red Planet will be televised which, according to a new report by aerospace researchers at MIT, might make for particularly morbid viewing. The MIT researchers analyzed the Mars One mission plan and found that the first astronaut would suffocate after 68 days. The other astronauts would die of starvation, dehydration, or incinerationin an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The analysis also concludes that 15 Falcon Heavy launches costing around $4.5 billion would be needed to support the first four Mars One crew. In short, the colonization of Mars will make for some seriously compelling TV.

Following the announcement of its one-way mission to Mars in 2012,some 200,000 people registered their interest on the Mars One website. That number has now been whittled down to 705 candidates a fairly even mix of men and women from all over the world (but mostly the US, of course!) Several teams of four astronauts (two men, two women) will now be assembled, and training will begin. The current plan is to send a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the first team of four to Mars in 2022 just eight years from now.The whole thing will be televised as a reality TV show. In the interim, a number of precursor missions supplies, life-support units, living units, and supply units will be sent to Mars ahead of the human colonizers. More colonists will be sent fairly rapidly thereafter, with 20 settlers expected by 2033.

The technology underpinningthe mission is rather nebulous, though and indeed, thats where the aerospace researchers at MIT find a number of potentially catastrophic faults. Basically, while we kind of have the technology to set up a colony on Mars, most of it is at a very low technology readiness level (TRL) and untested in a Mars-like environment. Mars One will rely heavily onlife support and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) squeezing water from Martian soil and oxygen from the atmosphere but these technologies are still a long way off large-scale, industrial use by a nascent human colony on Mars. NASAs next Mars rover will have an ISRU unit that will make oxygen from the Red Planets atmosphere of CO2 but that rover isnt scheduled to launch until 2020, just two years before the planned launch of Mars One.

Read:Musks million man march to Mars

After 68 days, oxygen levels will spike after the first wheat crop reaches maturity and then all hell will break loose

The paper prepared by the MIT researchers [PDF] is rather damning. Basically, due to the difficulty of shipping supplies to Mars, the colonists will mostly live off the land. The problem is, plants produce a lot of oxygen and in a closed environment, too much oxygen is a bad thing (things start to spontaneously explode). So, you have to vent the oxygen but we dont yet have the technology to vent oxygen without also venting the nitrogen, which is used to pressurize the various Mars One pods. As a result, air pressure will eventually get so thin that the colonists cant breathe with the first one dying of hypoxia after 68 days. Other potential modes of death are: starvation (the current Mars One plan simply doesnt contain enough calories for the colonists); dehydration; CO2 poisoning; and death by spontaneous immolation due to a rich oxygen atmosphere.

Read:NASAs Space Launch System is officially all systems go for Mars and Moon landings

The researchers also note that Mars Ones plan of sending more colonists after the original four is a bad, bad idea. Not only will this exacerbate any technological issues, but therell be an ever-increasing demand on resources like food and water, and faster wear-and-tear that will require more replacement parts. All of these factors willincrease the number of resupply craft, pushing the total cost of the project into tens of billions of dollars.

Breakdown of the first few cargo missions as part of the Mars One colonization. Note the growing percentage of ECLSS (life support) spare parts. It is expected that stuff will break down a lot on Mars, and new parts have to be flown in from Earth. (Or 3D-printed in-situ, but were not there yet.)

In short, the MIT researchers find a lot of problems with the current plans laid out by Mars One. Dutch entrepreneur and CEO of Mars One,Bas Lansdorp, disputes the contents of the MIT report, saying oxygen concentrators already exist and if oxygen levels and air pressure can be kept stable, then many of MITs other assertions about dehydration and starvation are moot.

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The first Mars One colonists will suffocate, starve, and be incinerated, according to MIT