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A grand mission to Mars that was always light on details has come to a decidedly terrestrial end. Mars One, a controversial space exploration project that made it as far as the "highly produced videos" stage of space colonization, has quietly filed for bankruptcy, according to a liquidation listing spotted by a Redditor on r/space.
As the post explains, the private company that spearheaded the Mars One spectacle is actually made up of two parts, a not-for-profit called the Mars One Foundation and a for-profit company known as Mars One Ventures. In 2016, Swiss financial services company InFin Innovative Finance AG picked up Mars One Ventures in a takeover bid.
When contacted about the bankruptcy, Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp told Engadget that the Mars One Foundation continues to operate but is stalled unless it receives an infusion of funds as Lansdorp works "to find a solution."
Mars One was ill-fated from its inception, more grounded in CGI videos and marketing hype for a Mars mission reality TV show than any kind of scientific reality. And they couldn't even get the show off the ground.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/mars-one-ventures-bankrupt/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:13AM
I mentioned NASA TV for a reason.
If they did hire a reality TV production team, they could edit the footage to create fake conflicts, or even coach the participants, although the 4-24 minute delay would make it harder to have a chat. The hazards would also be played up to build tension.
Stirring up real drama is a bad idea since it would hurt morale and could endanger colonists (more). And the colonists would to some extent be responsible for keeping themselves alive by building structures, operating equipment, and growing new food, which is a bit more than you have to do in the Big Brother house.
There is plenty of advertising potential, but it's hard to measure it and the costs would have to be split several ways.
Maybe NASA could hire amateur Martians to do experiments and foot part of the bill. But they might as well send real astronauts. NASA could even play the advertising game [nytimes.com].
One of their original cost estimates was $6 billion. Slash that to $3 billion, and maybe Coke would pay for the whole thing...
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