elon musk – Near-Earth Object

Mavericky Mars One

June 2, 2015 Paul FidalgoLeave a comment

Image source.

Before getting into this, you might want to catch up with some of my previous writing on Mars One:

Okay, onward.

In an unfortunately puffy piece at The Guardian on the Mars One project, we do learn a couple of new pieces of information, which include the fact that a company called Paragon Space Development is under contract to build space suits for Mars One, and that Elon Musk has at one point expressed his willingness to sell his rockets to Mars One, but has no agreement with them (which Mars One used to imply), and Musk expresses only skepticism for the plan.

The rest of the piece more or less characterizes Mars One as a mavericky, ballsy adventure that, shucks, just might work. And it does give a sense of how the criticism of the project in recent months has only served to harden the resolve of its would-be astronauts. If any part of the Mars One scheme irritates me, it’s how it’s already tearing a rent in families and relationships over a voyage that almost certainly will never happen. And if any aspect of it disturbs me, it’s the cultification of the voyage that you can witness in the interviews with its true believers.

We also learn that the project has been almost entirely funded so far by angel investors (“30-odd rich individuals and three or four companies that don’t demand a return on their investment”), except of course for the money they squeeze from the Mars One candidates. (One bought a t-shirt!) The next round of funding, says the author, comes from the kind of folks who will expect a profit under a predetermined schedule. “The point at which Mars One can announce backing from these guys is the point at which we have no choice but to take it seriously,” the author writes, as though it’s a fact. “And that point, [CEO Bas] Lansdorp says, is close.”

Lansdorp says. He says a lot of things.

Lansdorp is still talking about “200,000” applicants, when that number has been revealed to be bogus, he’s still talking about technical limitations that “would be solved in time” with no explanation.

But look, I get it. When I first heard about Mars One, I very much wanted it to be legitimate. And who knows, maybe it will turn out to be, and I’ll eat my metaphorical hat. Or crow. Or my heart out. Whatever. And I agree with the author’s sentiment (never mind the association that does not exist between Lansdorp and Musk):

What Lansdorp, Musk and others have done is reopen a conversation that had died. Somewhere on Earth, right now, the first human to set foot on Mars is probably among us.

Now that excites me.

Mars One: Interplanetary Travel on Underpants Gnome Principles

November 16, 2014 Paul FidalgoLeave a comment

There are two new fascinating articles about the Mars One mission, in which a small number of people train for ten years to be sent on a one-way trip to Mars to begin the long process of colonization. Run by a private non-profit corporation, it plans to contract all of its technical needs from private industry (such as Lockheed Martin and SpaceX), and comb through its flood of applicants who want to be the first human beings to set foot on another planet and never come home. And I tell you, there could not be two more different articles on a single subject.

The first, by Daniel Engber at Popular Science, colors the project as a daring feat with a dash of underdog spunk. Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp is profiled as a kind of unlikely visionary, the included photo of him is Steve-Jobs-scratching-his-beard in intensity. The applicants are wide-eyed dreamers, undeterred by the grueling existence of drudgery and isolation for which they’ve signed themselves up, fulfilling a monumental destiny for themselves and the species. Said one applicant to Engber, “It only seems weird to you because of when and where you live. I mean, would you ask an Inuit how he can stand the boredom of all the snow and rock?”

While the piece is not un-skeptical, I think the takeaway message is best summed up by CEO Lansdorp himself.

People can’t imagine that there are people who would like to do this. They say we’re going to Mars to die. But of course we’re not going to Mars to die. We’re going to Mars to live.

Whoa, right? Come on, guys. Even Elon Musk wants us to go to Mars! LET’S GO TO MARS.

But then one reads Elmo Keep’s more investigative piece at Matter, and the shine quickly fades.

The soul of the piece is Keep’s profile of one of the applicants, a brilliant polymath who despite his smarts and skills is utterly lost in his life, and who has glommed on to the Mars One mission with a near-religious fervor. Clearly, it’s less about the mission, and more to save himself. And Keep, through her investigation, finds that like all religions, the foundation is lacking in substance.

The first thing you might ask it, how are they going to pay for this mission? This:

A reality television series is the lynchpin of Mars One’s plan. It is through this that it intends to raise the necessary capital to actually fund the mission via advertising revenue and broadcast rights. … There is currently no network buyer for the show.

For the rights to advertise and screen this Survivor in space, Mars One estimates revenues of upwards of $8 billion, basing its estimates on the most recent Olympic Games cycle’s revenues. With this money, Mars One will then be able to purchase the spacefaring technologies that, in 10 years’ time, companies like SpaceX will have perfected, ready to send the Mars One astronauts on their journey.

So they’re presuming that a show that no one has green-lighted will make as much money as the Olympics, which will then allow them to buy technology that doesn’t yet exist. If this doesn’t sound sufficiently flimsy, it gets worse. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, which is touted as one of the providers of that technology, has signed no contracts with Mars One, and has no plans with them, but only tells Keep that they are “open” to relationships with “all interested parties.” So what is the technology they’re going to use?

The details of Mars One’s mission remain vague. … [Chief Technical Officer] Arno Wielders, who rebuffs requests for an interview, [replies] through the press office that he is too busy. Instead, I am directed to the website. On a page titled “The Technology,” it states very optimistically: “No new technology developments are required to establish a human settlement on Mars. Mars One has visited major aerospace companies around the world to discuss the requirements, budget, and timelines with their engineers and business developers. The current mission plan was composed on the basis of feedback received in these meetings.”

So to sum that up in Underpants Gnome terms:

Hold meetings.
Get feedback from meetings.
???
Send humans to Mars.

We also learn that the 200,000 “applicants” is a dubious number that includes anyone who happened upon the website and began clicking through.

Look, you really have to read all of Keep’s piece, it’s excellent and deeply troubling, and you won’t be able to hear the words “Mars One” again without also thinking of something like Herbalife or Amway.

I am also a little heartbroken by this. Of course, I always held deep skepticism about Mars One’s ability to pull off its aims, but I didn’t doubt anyone’s sincerity, but all signs from Keep’s article indicate that it’s not being taken seriously by the corporation. If that’s not the case, then it sounds as though they are deeply incompetent.

So I can only imagine how those who are devoting their lives to this mission might feel upon learning what a house of cards the whole operation appears to be. (This is presuming Keep’s reporting accurately represents the state of the mission.) Regardless of what personal holes one is trying to fill by signing up, I assume the connection many of these people now feel to Mars, to the mission, to the corporation must be quite deep. Discovering that it is less than what it claims to be could be devastating.

I could never even consider volunteering for something like this, but I too am drawn by the romance of the idea. Though I’d never be directly involved, I feel a yearning from some place deep within for my species to making bold, daring moves to expand its reach across the depths of space. As Elon Musk has said, and I’ve noted on this blog, “I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.”

Mars One, I fear, will not be maintaining the light. Perhaps the best thing that can be said of it, though, is that it has millions of people excited at the idea that someday we will. Maybe that’s enough.

Image from Project Deimos, a 1964 Mars mission concept.

Mars, Musk, and a Meditation

October 7, 2014 Paul FidalgoLeave a comment

Ross Andersen’s interview with Elon Musk at Aeon, on Musk’s ambitions for Mars colonization, is a gem. “Interview” doesn’t do it justice; it’s part interview, part examination of the motivations (Musk’s and civilization’s) for a Mars migration, as well as a meditation on the humanity of such an endeavor.

A big takeaway is how Musk sees a Mars trip not simply as a lofty goal of humanistic enrichment, but as a last and only best hope for a species tied to the unpredictable fortunes of a single planet and its fragile ecosphere. If we’re to go on as a species, we have to leave, sooner than later.

But you know, it’s not even about our species, per se. It’s about what we carry within us: consciousness.

Musk has been pushing this line – Mars colonisation as extinction insurance – for more than a decade now, but not without pushback. ‘It’s funny,’ he told me. ‘Not everyone loves humanity. Either explicitly or implicitly, some people seem to think that humans are a blight on the Earth’s surface. They say things like, “Nature is so wonderful; things are always better in the countryside where there are no people around.” They imply that humanity and civilisation are less good than their absence. But I’m not in that school,’ he said. ‘I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.’

And about those humans. Leave Musk for a moment, and read Andersen’s musing on the hypothetical trip to Mars by the future colonists:

It would be fascinating to experience a deep space mission, to see the Earth receding behind you, to feel that you were afloat between worlds, to walk a strange desert under an alien sky. But one of the stars in that sky would be Earth, and one night, you might look up at it, through a telescope. At first, it might look like a blurry sapphire sphere, but as your eyes adjusted, you might be able to make out its oceans and continents. You might begin to long for its mountains and rivers, its flowers and trees, the astonishing array of life forms that roam its rainforests and seas. You might see a network of light sparkling on its dark side, and realise that its nodes were cities, where millions of lives are coming into collision. You might think of your family and friends, and the billions of other people you left behind, any one of which you could one day come to love.

Do you, or do you not, feel the anxiety of being adrift? Do you not picture that blurry sapphire sphere receding from view as you realize how utterly surrounded and engulfed you are by blackness, pushed with direction and intention, but somehow still lost? My heart is beating faster.

And somehow, it all puts me in mind of Ernie from Sesame Street. I think it’s safe to say that as adventurous as the lad is, he would not be among the passengers on Musk’s one-way trip to Mars.

And a bit of trivia to tie it all up: Somewhere there exists, perhaps with my dad, or maybe only with my grandmother, a well-produced recording of a 5-year-old me singing this song, accompanied by my dad on guitar. I didn’t really get it then, but I do now.