Is Mars One legit?!

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett

Mars One, in case you haven’t heard, is basically a world-wide competition for ordinary people to win a one-way ticket to Mars, no experience necessary.

Sure mission commanders for NASA missions must log at least 1,000 hours at the helm of a jet, but hey – if you’re a dude from Portland that calls himself an alien and goes by the name MK-10 – that’s probably just as good.

Last week, the Mars One “mission” stirred up a bit of a public relations battle. First, Dr. Joseph Roche, an astrophysics professor at Trinity College in Dublin and one of the Mars One 100 “finalists”, revealed through an interview with the website Matter that the whole thing just might be a scam. Then, another finalist – Ryan MacDonald, a physics student at Oxford University – posted an online video hitting back at Roche’s claim.

Roche, who has since been dropped from the competition, said that many of the current 100 finalists “bought their way” into the next stage by contributing money to Mars One, a Dutch non-profit. The Trinity College professor also said he never had a face-to-face meeting with anyone from Mars One, despite initial statements that regional interviews would be part of the vetting process. He did, however, concede that he participated in a 15-minute Skype interview.

Roche claimed that he was spurred to speak out after numerous reporters, including yours truly for redOrbit, reported that the entire program had 200,000 applicants. Roche claimed that just 2,761 people applied.

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MacDonald, in a video response posted to YouTube, said that current finalists had in no way “bought” their way through to the next round, adding that he has only paid a £15 application fee so far. The Oxford University student also said that Skype interviews were conducted to simply apply the same criterion to each applicant. He said that further testing and evaluations would begin with the current stage of the process.

All for reality TV?

Some critics have pointed to the fact that television production company Endemol recently pulled out of a reality TV deal with Mars One as evidence that the mission is doomed before it even gets off the ground. The organization had suggested that revenue from a reality show on the competition will help generate the billions of dollars needed to get to Mars.

MacDonald dismissed this criticism in the same video and said that Mars One is being funded by private investors who will get a stake in any future television revenues.

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While Mars One has pegged that cost of an initial Mars colonization mission at around $6 billion, a recent study from MIT has put that figure at over $13 billion for the first Mars One crew. Even if the cost of the mission is $6 billion, it would take approximately 450 hours of revenue typically generated by American Idol to fund it.

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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113356965/is-mars-one-legitimate-032315/