we have bus Lansdorp CEO of Mars one
here to answer a number of questions
about the feasibility of Mars one
firstly what do you think of the recent
news articles that doubt the feasibility
of Mars one well first of all at Mars
one we really fell you a good criticism
about our mission because it helps our -
it helps us to improve our mission and
we even get a lot of criticism from our
advisors and that's exactly what we want
from them but the reasons the recent bad
press about Mars one was caused to a
large extent by an article on medium.com
by Elmo Kip and that article simply
contains a lot of things that are not
true as a few examples I will mention
the suggestion was made that our
candidates were selected on the basis of
how much money they donate to Mars one
and that's just simply untrue and it is
very easy to find on our website there
have been a lot of currents around three
candidates that did not make any
donation to Mars one there's also a lot
of people who did not make it to the
third round they've contributed a lot to
Mars one it's not related at all and to
say that it does is simply a lie and
another thing that was said is that
there's only 2700 applications for Mars
one which is also not true and we've
offered Elmo keep as the first
journalist effort to have access to our
list of 200,000 applications she was not
interested in that so it seems to me
that she's more interested in writing a
sensational article about Mars 1 then in
the truth concerns have also been raised
about the astronaut selection process
and its thoroughness what is your
response to them well we started our
astronaut selection with more than
200,000 applications that were done
online that included a video and a lot
of psychological questions for our
candidates we used that to narrow it
down to about 1,000 that had to do a
medical check basically the same medical
check that NASA does for its astronauts
and then all the remaining candidates
underwent an interview so the interview
and all the other parts of the selection
process were were met by north craft our
medic our chief medical officer and he
has done astronaut selection for about
five years at the Japanese Space Agency
with NASA for about 10 years so he's
extremely experienced in this and
interestingly it's it's not so complex
to determine who is not qualified to go
to Mars and that's what we've been doing
so far
our next step is to find from the people
who we think might be qualified to find
the people that are really the right
ones to go so we will we will start in
much more thoroughness now we will bring
them together we will give them teams
team challenges and individual
challenges much longer interviews with a
much bigger selection committee and in
this way we will we will determine who
are the best to go while we're on the
topic of the candidates will there be a
revenue share between the candidates and
Mars one when candidates participate in
Mars one related commercial activities
well it's very important for us that
Mars one is in charge of which
commercial Mars one related activities
are candidates participate in and that's
why we're preparing a contract that will
arrange things like this it's important
because we need to make sure that the
individual activities that our
candidates
participate in do not conflict with
other things that Mars one is doing in
the contract that we will soon have with
our candidates we have agreed a revenue
share because we believe that it's fair
that our candidates take a part of what
Mars one gets for those commercial
activities it's very different in my
case when I speak about Mars one the
entire speaking fee goes to Mars one
because I get a salary our candidates do
not so we think it's only fair that they
get part of the revenues that we get
through their activities actually a lot
of our candidates have
that they're not at all interested in
this that they wants all the money to go
to Mars ones mission but that's really
up to them and does Amara does Mars one
have a production company and a
broadcaster for the astronaut selection
documentary series we were very close to
a to a deal with animal owned our loved
Smithson productions but in the end the
deal fell apart on details in the
contracts and we ended that cooperation
we now have a new production company
with whom we were working since November
of last year and they are currently
selling our documentary series to an
international broadcaster there's no
deal in place yet but it's it's looking
very promising there's a lot of interest
moving on to a different topic is a six
billion budget really enough for such a
complex mission well
NASA's lowest cost estimate that I have
ever seen it's about thirty-five billion
US dollars but let's not forget that
Mars ones mission is completely
different we are organising a mission of
permanent settlement so we do not need
to worry about the return trip and
that's really where most of the
complexity is it's in developing bigger
rockets to get the systems to Mars a
bigger landing system to land the huge
components for the return mission on
Mars and of course developing a whole
new launch system that can launch from
Mars while even on earth launch is so
difficult our six billion cost figure
comes from good discussions that we've
had with established aerospace companies
from around the world that have already
been building systems like this for the
ISS for for unmanned missions to Mars
and we're very confident that our budget
will be enough and how is the funding of
the mission progressing well Mars one's
mission will be funded through
investments we've had a very successful
investment round in 2013 that has
financed all the things that we have
done up to now and we have actually come
to an agreement within consortium
consortium of investors late last year
for a much bigger round of investments
and unfortunately the paperwork of that
deal is taking much longer than we
expected and I think that it will be
done before the summer of this year that
means that we've we will not be in time
to finance the follow-up study that look
at Martin needs to do for our first
unmanned mission in 2018 which
unfortunately means that we will have to
delay that mission to 2020 so two years
later and delaying our unmanned mission
our first unmanned mission by two years
also means that all the other missions
will move by the same period of time
having our first human landing now
planned for 2027 so there's a two-year
delay what does that mean for Mars one
well going to Mars is very difficult and
NASA has been talking about going to
Mars in 20 years
for more than 45 years now and that's
NASA and of course NASA has to a return
mission which is a lot more complex than
than our permanent settlement mission
our one-way trip but it shows how
difficult Mars exploration is at the
same time Mars one has already achieved
a lot we've had our first contract with
Paragon space Development Corporation
for the suits and the life support
systems our first contract with Lockheed
Martin for our unmanned mission we have
a very impressive board of ambassadors
with the Nobel Prize laureates a great
advisory board with people like Mason
Peck NASA's former CTO we are on the
right track and we are moving in the
right direction and so we have a
two-year delay now but we are and we
show that people are interested in March
1 people Mart in Mars exploration people
want this to happen and it's my
conviction that's as long as we can show
that we are moving in the right
direction that we're getting the right
companies under contracts that we get
those contracts done then the world will
accept that we have a delay in getting
our humans there and is it really a
failure if we land our first crew 2 or 4
or 6 or even 8 years late I would be
extremely proud if we can make that
happen and Mars one is still fully
committed
to keep dads on track thank you for
answering my questions
thank you I guess you're about the only
person that doesn't have TV
at all
on fire please
