Mars One is the idea of Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdrop, and Dutch scientist Arno Wielders’ for trying to put an Earth settlement on the planet Mars. They have been taking applications for people willing to join in a project to go the Red Planet and never come back. They ultimately say they plan to send a group of 300 people to Mars to start a colony there by 2025.
Dr. Joseph Roche, is an assistant professor at Trinity College from Ireland, and has a PhD in physics and astrophysics. He is one of the shortlist of 705 candidates Mars One has on its list to take a one way trip to Mars. The list started with about 200,000 names and has been whittled down so that the group can decide whom the lucky candidates are that will actually get to go to Mars.
Since he got on their shortlist of candidates, Roche says he has learned things that make him believe the project is doomed to failure and that it is wasting money and ripping off contributors. Roche says that he has nightmares about Mars One getting lots of support and money and then the whole thing collapses and fails.
Roche explained that when someone enters into the Mars One Community, they start to be awarded points for various things during each selection round, and one way to get more points is to buy something or donate money to the group. He also said that Mars One requires that if any candidate gives an interview, that Mars One gets 75 percent of the payment for that interview.
The Trinity College assistant professor voiced his opinions on how the Mars One Community ranks people and rewards the ones that help bring in the most money to support the project or who buy its official Mars One merchandise. He said that he didn’t think much of the way the Mars One Community interacted with candidates, citing the fact that all there is to the process of becoming a candidate is to fill out a form, do a video and have a 10 minute Skype call with officials.
Roche says this isn’t enough time to make a decent judgment call or to select anyone to go to Mars. In fact, Roche says, he hasn’t even met anyone in person who is part of the Mars One organization. He also claims that even though there is supposed to have been 200,000 applicants that only 2,761 have actually applied.
He stresses that it falls very short from NASA’s way of deciding what is required to be a possible space traveler. For instance, he said that NASA requires space mission candidates to have at least 1,000 hours of flying time before they can even be considered for joining a training program.
Mars One, Roche says, gives more support to how much money a candidate can bring the organization than any other item of ranking. Roche says he applied out of curiosity and wants to get more people to pay attention to space science.
All in all, Roche claims that the Mars One mission doesn’t have enough money, has no technology contacts required to get them what they need to go to Mars, and has no TV partner as they said they needed to form a reality show about their Mars mission. Therefore, Roche says the Mars One mission isn’t likely to be going anywhere any time in the near future.
