BEAST Magazine #1 2015

#Science | Space
71
Is a 6 billion dollar-funding enough for such
a complex mission? How does the donation
system work?
We estimate the cost of our mission to be about
6 billion US dollars which is obviously a lot of
money. Yet, a lot of people still question if that
will be enough. What people tend to forget is
that the Mars One project cannot be compared
to the NASA missions to Mars. To compare, the
lowest cost figure that I have seen for a NASA
mission to Mars was 65 billion US dollars. The
main difference is that Mars One is a permanent
settlement mission, a one way trip. We won’t be
bringing our astronauts back. In this respect, we
don’t have to develop bigger rockets, don’t have
to develop new landing systems and don’t have
to develop the capability of launching people
from Mars back to Earth, the latter being the
bigger challenge for NASA.
This mission will be funded through a number of
different revenue streams, the most important
being investors coming on board, if I may say,
because they believe that our revenue model
can give them a good return on investment.
Part of the revenue stream is also donations,
coming from all over the world. Donations were
actually initiated by people, we did not ask for
anything! People support us and believe in our
mission. Every step we take is leading us in the
right direction and we hope to land our first
unmanned mission in 2020.
Can there be a delay in the planned timing
for the mission? If so, what would be the
consequences?
Going to Mars is immensely ambitious and
difficult, I don’t even think that there is a bigger
challenge you can take on. There is actually a
huge “risk” of delay. What we present here is an
ideal situation if we have all the finance in place
in the right time, if no significant technology
problems occur, etc. For example, 5 to 10% of
all rocket launchers go wrong to some extent:
there is either an explosion, which is a very
serious problem of course, or the satellite
just enters into the wrong orbit. Many things
can happen on the way to Mars but all the
stakeholders, investors, partners and candidates
are aware of it, yet, we still are convinced that
we are moving the right direction. Actually
I think, we would all be surprised if we were to
stay on schedule. What’s most important for us
is to progress step by step.
“THERE IS
NO BIGGER
CHALLENGE
THAN
SENDING
A CREW
TO MARS”
Elon Musk suggests to
terraform mars by nuking it
Popular Science / Mashable
extracts «The billionaire
supervillain clarified his idea
to terraform Mars.
He doesn’t want to bomb
Mars. He just wants to bomb
the sky above Mars every few
seconds. «What I was talking
about,» said Musk, «was
having a series of very large,
by our standards, but very
small by calamity standards
- essentially having two tiny
pulsing suns over the poles.”
[…] Musk says that the two
“tiny suns,” formed by fusion
bombs, would warm up Mars’
frozen carbon dioxide so that
it turns into gas that could
help capture heat, creating
a greenhouse effect on Mars. »
Sarcastic Rover
C’est le nom du compte
twitter @SarcasticRover
créé par Jason Filiatrault,
scénariste canadien, pour
exprimer les pensées du
rover Mars Curiosity, mêlant
commentaires d’images de la
NASA et blagues de l’auteur.
Parmi les perles recensées
«Is there life on Mars?
There is no life on Mars.
Trust me. I’m here, and I have
no life». Egalement «With
the discovery of salt water
on Mars, the probability of
Martian-Shark attacks just
went up, like 9000%. » ou
encore son tweet Future
elections on Mars, ci-dessus.