Category Archives: DIY space

Video: Mars One CEO responds to questions about the project

Following up on the recent criticisms of the Mars One project,  CEO Bas Lansdorp responds point by point in this posting : Mars One’s CEO Bas Lansdorp answers questions about mission feasibility – Mars One

And in this video:

What do you think of the recent news articles that doubt the feasibility of Mars One?

At Mars One we really value good criticism because it helps us to improve our mission. We get a lot of criticism from our advisors and that is also exactly what we want from them. The recent bad press about Mars One was largely caused by an article on medium.com, which contains a lot of things that are not true. For example, the suggestion was made that our candidates were selected on the basis on how much money they donate to Mars One. That is simply not true and this is very easy to find that on our website. There are a lot of current Round Three candidates that did not make any donations to Mars One and there are also lot of people that did not make it to the third round that contributed a lot to Mars One. The two things are not related at all and to say that they are is simply a lie. The article also states that there were only 2,700 applications for Mars One which is not true. We offered the reporter, the first journalist ever, access to our list of 200,000 applications but she was not interested in that. It seems that she is more interested in writing a sensational article about Mars One than in the truth.

Continue… 

Update on the ‘Garden of ETON’ ISS experiment campaign

I’ve mentioned the Chicks in Space (MaryAnn Bulawa, Adia Bulawa, & Lillith Bulawa) and their campaign to crowd-fund a space experiment a couple of times (see here and here).

We’ve developed a hydroponic garden specifically designed to function under conditions of microgravity – ETON. We’ve been offered the opportunity to launch NanoETON on NASA’s ISS to test our hypothesis that water can be circulated in microgravity using centripetal force. This research may help the development of hydroponic gardens for future space missions.

They are participating in the DreamUP! program that

helps students raise money to fund testing their experiments in space on the U.S. National Laboratory aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Through DreamUp, junior high, high school and undergraduate college students can take advantage of NanoRacks’ three standardized research platforms on the International Space Station. NanoRacks DreamUp program, which aims to stimulate commercial student participation in low-earth orbit projects gives the opportunity to conduct experiments in the unique weightlessness environment of space.

The crowd-funding campaign has now reached 71% of the goal of $15k with 11 days laft: Sending the Garden of ETON to Space – Experiment

Our research is at a standstill until we are able to continue our experiments under actual conditions of microgravity. We have the opportunity to send a payload to the ISS on NanoRacks LLC. We have reconfigured our experiment to a 4×4 inch box but need funding to transport the project to NASA’s International Space Station.

There is now a doubling of any donation:

Here’s what you get with a donation:

We’re also offering backers rewards for joining the community!
$50: Certificate of Participation from NanoRacks, LLC
$100: Have your name written inside the hardware that carries E.T.O.N. to the International Space Station.
$250: Receive an item such as a Space Patch that has flown to the ISS and back (0 out of 2 left)
$1,000+: Decal with your Name or Company Logo placed on the outside of the payload with an accompanying photograph. *Donor must supply a decal of 1 inch by 3 inches or less. (Limited supply, 5 out of 6 left)

Mars One finalists refute accusations from one of their own + Making Mars settlement real

The Mars One project is getting hammered on the web by these two articles that include accusations against the project made by one of the entrants who made the cut to the Mars100 group:

However, other Mars1000 finalists respond with a rebuttal to each of the accusations: Current Mars100 Finalists refute Elmo Keep’s Mars One “conspiracy theory.” — Medium.

As I’ve indicated before, Mars One is essentially an aspirational project. It aspires to create a Mars settlement but it is dependent on others to make a settlement technically feasible at a price that a private effort could conceivably afford. There is nothing in the Mars One plan about developing its own rockets, spacecraft, settlement hardware, etc. Mars One is all about creating a business model that can raise sufficient funds to pay the company (or companies) that supply the rockets, spacecraft, etc. to take a group of private individuals to the Red Planet.

Currently, it is only SpaceX that looks like it could supply affordable transportation to the Red Planet in the next decade or two. Elon Musk has often said, as in the interview at MIT last fall shown in the video below, that Mars settlement is the primary goal of the company:

The long term ambition of SpaceX is to develop the technologies necessary to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, or civilization on Mars,

Full reusability of rockets and spacecraft is what makes it not crazy to talk about reductions in space transportation costs by factors of 10 to 100:

Well, it is a chicken and egg situation, the reason why there’s low demand for spaceflight is because it’s ridiculously expensive, and so at some point someone has to say, okay, we’re going to make something that’s much more affordable and then see what applications develop. That’s what has to happen.

The situation in rocketry is like if an aircraft – imagine if aircraft were single use, then how many people would fly? The flight rate would be really low. If you buy a 757 it’s like $250M, or maybe $300M, and you need two of them for a round-trip. No-one is paying half-a-billion dollars to fly from Boston to London, and if that were the case there’d be like a very small number of flights for scientific and military purposes and people would say, wow, the market for aircraft is so tiny, people really love going by boat – it’s nonsense.

If we have rockets that are reusable, we could – fully-reusable and can get to a decent flight rate, the potential is there to get a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of space transport, which is, I think, vital for establishment of a self-sustaining civilization on another planet or even on the Moon or some sort of L5 colony or whatever, but you really need to get the cost down – we need a two order of magnitude improvement, at least, in the cost of transport. In fact, relative to the estimates of what it costs to do a manned Mars mission, I think like some of the lower estimates are at the $100B to $200B level, for a four person mission, we need more like a 10,000 fold reduction. I mean, so people can afford to go.

(As long as NASA ignores reusability and focuses only on a big and stupendously expensive rocket, the agency will never afford to go to Mars even for a simple flag and footprints mission with three or four astronauts.)

Elon is aiming for a price of $500k for a person to move to Mars. He sees that as an amount that many people could raise by cashing out all their assets.

He apparently has had no direct contact with Mars One and has stated that the organization’s emphasis on one-way trips is misguided. It won’t be affordable to go to Mars unless the transports are two-way:

I think there’s plenty of people who will sign up for a one-way trip to Mars. It’d certainly be enough, but I think the question is, is it a one-way mission and then you die, or is it a one-way mission and you get resupplied, that’s a big difference. I think it ends up being a moot point because you want to bring the spaceship back. These spaceships are expensive, okay, they’re hard to build. You can’t just leave them there. So whether or not people want to come back or not, is kind of – like, they can just jump on if they want, but we need the spaceship back. I mean, it’d be kind of weird if there’s this huge collection of spaceships on Mars over time. It’d be like, maybe we should send them back – no, of course we should send them back. Particularly if we want to have a colony of some kind that’s of significant size.

The Mars One graphics typically show Dragon spacecraft converted into habitats on the ground. However, Elon thinks that going to Mars in Dragons makes little sense:

Well, the illustrations that I’ve seen basically has them using a bunch of SpaceX rockets and Dragon spacecraft. I’m like, okay, if they want to buy a bunch of Dragons and Falcon 9 rockets, that’s cool. We’ll certainly sell them. I mean, I don’t think they’ve got anywhere near the funding to buy even one, so I think therefore it’s unrealistic, and I think trying to go to Mars in Dragon is less than ideal. It’s at least – well, if you go real fast it’s maybe a three month journey and normally it would be more like a 6 to 8 month journey. That’s a long time to spend in something with the interior volume of an SUV. I’d recommend waiting for the next generation of technology.

Elon has said that later this year he will describe in more detail the “next generation of technology” that he believes will enable his plan for Mars settlement.  If SpaceX makes steady progress over the next few years in implementing that technology, especially reusable rockets, then proposals for Mars settlement will gain increasing credibility and many organizations will emerge to pursue that goal. Mars One may be a leader in that movement or it may have become a footnote; an early group that failed to get off the ground financially but proved that there are plenty of people eager and willing to move to Mars.

Update: Some comments from Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX about Mars travel: SpaceX: No One Laughs Anymore When We Talk About Colonizing Mars – Motherboard

“We’re not shy about talking about Mars, which would be an extraordinary step for humans, to actually have a settlement there,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday at the Satellite conference in Washington, DC. “The whole company is geared up on that, everybody’s eye is on the Red Planet.”

“We’re not interested in one way trips,” she said. “In order to take people there and come back, you can’t toss the rocket when you get there and then wait 30 years until you can build another one on Mars.”

There is a surprising number of people that want to leave Earth, we believe there is a commercial application for any Mars mission,” she added.

My emphasis.

The Zero Gravity Cocktail Glass Project

The Cosmic Lifestyle Corp, founded by long-time space advocate Samuel Coniglio and others, has opened a crowd-funding campaign for the Zero Gravity Cocktail Project on Kickstarter, which aims to design and manufacture a stylish container to hold a drink in weightlessness:

Award Winning Robotics Engineer Launches Cocktail Glass for Space

What happens when you combine an an award-winning mixologist, Hollywood prop fabricator and movie magic maker, and a space tourism designer with an award winning robotics engineer? Creative genius at it’s best.

Nick Donaldson, Chief Creative Officer and cofounder of Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation, is the secret sauce behind the Zero Gravity Cocktail Glass Project currently on Kickstarter. Launched March 3, the eclectic and impressive team is designing for the future of space travel and tourism.

“Designing and engineering the elements needed for items going to space is more interestingly challenging than one might think. Many conversations and experiments over the course of several years have happened to achieve the glass design we have. As we continue experimenting with the physics and design attributes, we are excited to see what will happen next,” Nick says.

“This is only the beginning of a new era where astronauts will have more comfortable surroundings available with solutions like ours. Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation seeks to be a leader in these opportunities.”

In an attempt to bridge the gap between the space tourism vision and mainstream reality, the team at Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation created a fun, usable object to show that space tourism is not an abstract concept, but a stepping stone for improving the way people live, work, and play beyond planet Earth. This project is supported by the Space Tourism Society and Space Frontier Foundation. Space Frontier Foundation is offering a free membership to those who donate $25 or more to the Kickstarter campaign.

Support the Kickstarter!
Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation has launched their Zero Gravity Cocktail Glass Project Kickstarter campaign March 3. Funds will go towards drop testing, patent filing and a parabolic flight to test different liquids. Help them reach their fundraising goal, by donating at www.kickstarter.com/projects/spacemansam/zero-gravity-cocktail-project

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The creative team behind the invention consists of celebrity bartender and mixologist, Russell Davis, who was rated #1 Bartender in the U.S. in 2012, was “Nightclub & Bar Magazine’s” Bartender of the Year in 2012, and starred in SpikeTV’s “Bar Rescue” TV series; Samuel Coniglio, the cofounder of Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation, is a futurist, an artist & experience designer and space tourism expert. Brent Heyning, also a cofounder, is a former “Mr. Wizard” Hollywood prop & set designer and fabricator, who now serves as the Principal and Chief Designer of Toyshoppe Systems; Nick Donaldson, a toy designer and robot engineer, has been designing and building robots for 15 years, from advanced research robots to successful toys and medal winning competition robots.

The Cosmic Lifestyle Corporation is a boutique concept, design, and branding company that develops stylish products for offworld use while connecting Earth brands to space.

For more information about the Zero Gravity Cocktail Project, visit: www.cosmiclifestyle.com.