Bas Lansdorp | |
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| Born | 5 March 1977 |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | University of Twente |
| Occupation(s) | Inventor, Entrepreneur |
| Known for | CEO of Mars One |
Bas Lansdorp (born 5 March 1977) is a Dutch entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and CEO of the defunct Mars One. [1] [2]
Lansdorp became determined to establish the first permanent human colony on Mars during his studies at the University of Twente. His primary focus was not on overcoming the technological challenges, rather the business model. [3]
Until 2013, he allegedly financed almost the entire project himself. [3] There are two entities to the Mars One: Mars One Foundation and Mars One Ventures. Mars One is non-profit and funded by donations. Mars One implements and manages the mission, trains astronauts, owns the hardware, etc. Mars One Ventures is a for-profit entity of Mars One and holds exclusive monetization rights around the mission. Revenue from the monetization is expected to increase as the venture progresses. [4]
On 28 December 2013, Lansdorp did an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit and had to face much criticism and skepticism about Mars One. [5] He responded to the criticism positively, he said “Since we started Mars One in March 2011, we received support from scientists, engineers, businessmen and – women and aerospace companies from all over the world. The announcement of our plan in May 2012 resulted in the engagement of the general public, and the support from sponsors and investors. To see our mission evolve this way feels like my dream is becoming a reality." [6]
Two scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sydney Do and Andrew Owens, produced a study claiming that Mars One’s proposal as it stood would see its astronauts die in 68 days. [7] In order to regain credibility, Lansdorp agreed to a debate with Do and Owens on the feasibility of the Mars One project.
The debate was held in April 2015 at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and was titled “Is Mars One Feasible?”. It also included Barry Finger, VP of Engineering at the Paragon Space Development Corporation and one of the key people involved in the Mars One project. During the debate, Finger conceded that the technical analysis from MIT was mostly correct, while Mars One's CEO Bas Lansdorp admitted that their 12-year plan for landing humans on Mars by 2027 was "mostly fiction". [8]
On January 15, 2019, Mars One filed for bankruptcy. [9]
In 2008, Lansdorp founded Ampyx Power with Richard Ruiterkamp in order to create a more modern and efficient way to harvest wind energy. He was involved in the design process of new aircraft and project overview from 2008 to 2011. In 2011, he sold his shares in the company in order to found Mars One.
The Mars Society is a nonprofit organization that advocates for human Mars exploration and colonization. It was founded by Robert Zubrin in 1998 and based on Zubrin's Mars Direct philosophy, which aims to make human mission to Mars as lightweight and feasible as possible. The Mars Society aims to generate interest in the Mars program by garnering support from the public and lobbying. Many Mars Society members and former members are influential in the wider spaceflight community, such as Buzz Aldrin and Elon Musk.
Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars. He and his colleague at Martin Marietta, David Baker, were the driving force behind Mars Direct, a proposal in a 1990 research paper intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission. The key idea was to use the Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen, water, and rocket propellant for the surface stay and return journey. A modified version of the plan was subsequently adopted by NASA as their "design reference mission". He questions the delay and cost-to-benefit ratio of first establishing a base or outpost on an asteroid or another Apollo program-like return to the Moon, as neither would be able to provide all of its own oxygen, water, or energy; these resources are producible on Mars, and he expects people would be there thereafter.
Space colonization is the use of outer space or celestial bodies other than Earth for permanent habitation or as extraterrestrial territory.
Private spaceflight refers to spaceflight developments that are not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA.
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Colonization or settlement of Mars is the theoretical human migration and long-term human establishment of Mars. The prospect has garnered interest from public space agencies and private corporations and has been extensively explored in science fiction writing, film, and art.
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Asteroids, including those in the asteroid belt have been suggested as a possible site of human colonization. Some of the driving forces behind this effort to colonize asteroids include the survival of humanity, as well as economic incentives associated with asteroid mining. The process of colonizing asteroids does have many obstacles that must be overcome for human habitation, including transportation distance, lack of gravity, temperature, radiation, and psychological issues.
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The Astrogeology Science Center is the entity within the United States Geological Survey concerned with the study of planetary geology and planetary cartography. It is housed in the Shoemaker Building in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Center was established in 1963 by Eugene Merle Shoemaker to provide lunar geologic mapping and to assist in training astronauts destined for the Moon as part of the Apollo program.
Jane Poynter is an American aerospace executive, author and speaker. She is founder, co-CEO and CXO of Space Perspective, a luxury space travel company. She was co-founder and former CEO of World View Enterprises, a private near-space exploration and technology company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Poynter was also a founding member of the Biosphere 2 design team and a crew member from the original two-year mission inside the materially closed ecological system.
Maria T. Zuber is an American geophysicist who is the vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also holds the position of the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. She was the principal investigator for the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission, which was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Some have also considered exploring the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos. Long-term proposals have included sending settlers and terraforming the planet. Proposals for human missions to Mars have come from e.g. NASA, European Space Agency, Boeing, and SpaceX. As of 2023, only robotic landers and rovers have been on Mars. The farthest humans have been beyond Earth is the Moon, under the Apollo program.
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Nanosurf AG, headquartered in Liestal, Switzerland, is a developer, manufacturer and supplier of nano-microscopes for industrial and academic research, as well as for educational purposes. Nanosurf's atomic force microscopes (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscopes (STM) are used for metrological surface inspections and for the visualization of structures, and material properties on the nanometer scale.
Mars One was a small private Dutch organization that received money from investors by claiming it would use it to land the first humans on Mars and leave them there to establish a permanent human colony. From its announcement in 2012 to its bankruptcy in early 2019, it is estimated to have received tens of millions of dollars. The organization was not an aerospace company and did not manufacture hardware.
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By decision of 15 January 2019, the Civil Court of the City of Basel declared the company bankrupt with effect from 15 January 2019, 3.37 p.m., thus dissolving it.
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