Comment Re:Sigh... Yet another scam (Score 1) 233
I know the idea of going to Mars is pretty awesome but this just reeks of scam. They are claiming they will launch the first people by 2024, a mere 9 years from now. You will note that except for a Donate link there is no mention of funding. They even say "No new technology developments are required to establish a human settlement on Mars", which is demonstrably false.
Why is slashdot giving scammers like this the time of day? This is not a real mission to Mars. This is not even a credible attempt at one. There is no funding, no realistic plan, no details, no technology development, and nothing else that should even give the slightest hint that this is anything more than a scam.
It doesn't strike me as a scam as much as a sincere attempt by a group of moderately accomplished yet fairly typical geeks to take their best shot and go as far as they can.
I look at their plan and my thought is that it's more-or-less what I would do if I really wanted to launch a mission to mars. The big asterix is cost and technical expertise. They say they need 6 billion which might be feasible, big Hollywood blockbusters can run $200 million and Olympic broadcast/sponsorship would be enough to cover the budget, so if they get something credible (or at least entertaining) going then the networks might get interested. More likely might be some eccentric billionaire willing to dump a large percentage of their net worth into a vanity project.
For me the big thing is the technical and organizational expertise, I suspect they're massively underestimating the difficulty of the technical challenges and it will be a very long time before they've built up the organizational expertise to even address them. And because they're underestimating the technical difficulty I also suspect the budget is massively underestimated.
I suspect the best case for the project is a moderately successful media venture that either sets up the organization for a proper attempt in 20+ years, or spurns a government to action.