New Mars Forums

There are currently 6 main Mars groups (and their chapters) that are working towards trying to get humans on Mars asap. They are:

1. The Mars Society: Started in 1998, The first and largest, but with Zubrinholding fast to Mars Direct and a big focus on trying to get government funding for it, they have lost their appeal over the years and although they do discuss private alternative ways to Mars, most of their leadership do not believe in their hearts that private ways are THE way, so they tend to stick with government lobbying route, and most members feel rather powerless waiting around for something that will never come.
2. MarsDrive:Started in 2005 from out of the Red Colony forums and growing into a worldwide group working on mission designs and alternative funding plans, have presented at conferences and are constantly evolving and changing as new political, social, technological or financial developments happen. We have a clear path forward now.
3. The Mars Foundation: Started in 2005 out of the Mars Society, and with a big focus on settlement designs. From what I can see they don't have a big outreach push going on and are closer to being an academic group.
4. Explore Mars: Started in late 2010/early 2011, were a big offshoot from the Mars Society and their leader is Chris Carberry who was formerly the Executive Director of the Mars Society U.S. Obviously it was a falling out over methods and ways to reach their goals, although this group still reflects the old Mars Society line of hoping in government funded missions "way in the future" sometime. Good outreach ability, but they still miss the point- People want to feel like they are a part of something meaningful and real, not just sitting around waiting on government funded missions to appear. Lot's of potential here, but not realizing it yet.
5. The Mars Initiative: Started in mid 2011 as an idea from a frustrated Mars Society member, to set up a simple transparent fund to literally fund the first human mission to Mars. They have so far raised $1600 towards that goal, and I have helped as an advisor where I could. They feel that online outreach will get them to their goal but I feel they are missing real world aspects and need much more substance before people will trust them with millions or billions in donations. MarsDrive is a partner group with them.
6. Mars One: Started mid 2011 from a frustrated ex Mars Society member in the Netherlands, as a private company but have now become a non profit. They plan to send humans one way to Mars in 11 years time but when you peer through the smoke and mirrors, their substance is thin, and they are lacking in resources although have done well with online outreach so far. Many legal, technical and financial issues remain unclear which is their weakness at this time. They only reveal these details to potential sponsors, but what they fail to realize is that potential sponsors can come from anywhere, so locking out the general public is hurting their push forward.

As you can see, these groups all have their issues and challenges, all of them (including mine), struggle with lack of funds and volunteers and all think that their way is the best. The Mars Society was once looked at as the main group to do this, but after 15 years of habs and more habs, members are leaving, leaders are leaving and some very talented people as well. All of us have problems of public perception, after all, how can any small group like this expect to rival NASA and send humans to Mars? It seems unbelieveable.

But there are many talented, qualified and expert people in all of these groups, and often they have advisory boards who have had real experience with NASA missions such as Buzz Aldrin, Don Rapp and others. I don't think we lack the people or contacts to get to our goals, what I think is that the academic types who run the main groups are so strong minded that we must accept only government funded "official" ways to Mars or that science must be the main focus that they don't realize that most average members are frustrated and want to see action, not words. They want to also know that they might also have a chance one day to go to Mars, and government missions don't allow for that.

They are fairly divided and secretive because they are trying to convey the impression that they have what it takes to get their goals, but year after year of nothing kind of trumps all the smoke and mirrors stuff anyway. We can't explain away our lack of real progress. So people lose interest. That is why MarsDrive and myself are so engaging and I do come to forums etc. I want to know what the people think and engage with them. We all share the same dream after all. The leaders of these other groups need to stop being so aloof and do the same. If they want powerful growing member bases, they need to get real, get engaged and work on alterntive ways to Mars than government funding. This forum here is a small reflection on the dysfunctional nature of Mars groups, but it can improve if we work together more instead of all pulling in opposite directions. In the end, the above 6 groups are the only real people concerned with sending humans to Mars, so it's time we banded together for real and made some progress.

And the scarcity of responses and time between responses proves my point. This forum has alot of great information, but if it can't be found easily then what is the point when so many stronger rival sites exist now like facebook? Activity in those places is much higher than here, I can see that.

"All forums seem to have taken a hit to Facebook and Twitter who have cost us dear"

I think what he means Rob is that this forum has some big problems in popularity now and is likely not to come back as it was.

Think about it- we started when Facebook and Twitter were nothing. Social networking was nothing. The internet itself was still quite basic. In 2012, this forum, after the serious rise of all these other (much more popular) discussion outlets is the last bastion of a few die hard technicals and academic sorts. What is the purpose of forums when we have sites like MoonMars.com ( http://moonmars.com/news )giving us dedicated facebook type places to talk and store documents and collaborate with experts across many space groups?

Then you have a 2 year wipe out and forum down right when all these other places are evolving DAILY. There are some great ideas and discussions here but the information is very hard to sort through and find, and alot is lost. So in light of all this competition, what is the way forward here? Is there a point of difference here? Something we can't do on Facebook or elsewhere? I have my own forum at MarsDrive and we have the same issues. The reality is it's time to move on guys. Sort the archive into a usable resource I say, and store it over at MoonMars where it can help in the drive to settle Mars and we all work together.

What do you think?

Billionaires are indeed very smart, but also very focused people. I often speak to quite wealthy people and you would be surprised how wrapped up in their own world they are. They are generally specialists in their fields too. The reality remains that as far as I know, no professional or believable case has been presented to them on how they might be involved. I have no doubt that there are some billionaires who likely would fund humans to Mars not for profit, but for history, glory and their legacy. It's not always about money you know.

How is the progress on recovering the files guys?

Just want to know what you guys think of one way missions and what issues you see from a technical standpoint. I'm surprised there hasn't been more response to this given the massive worldwide media attention this plan has got (more than all Mars groups combined PR power). In short- the first time the common man really hears about a Mars mission, it is this plan. What are your thoughts and issues?

I do remember talking about this subject long ago but no one really responded, I guess because I'm viewed as from a "rival" group. But look, we are all in this together. Mars is in our hearts and we all want to see it happen. To give you some background, and understanding, MarsDrive has often been called a "virtual" group, and that's ok (though not totally accurate). As such, our experience is in this area.

My own history was that I started as an admin at Red Colony forums but their admins left and the spam took over so I shut it down sadly. They had a forum that was active with hundreds of members and thousands of posts. (3 times more than Marsdrive). Luckily MarsDrive had a forum so we continued on, but we also got attacked a few years back and after painstakingly building our posts to some 3000+ and members, we lost it all in an attack. We were offline for only 3 months but for a small group it almost killed us off totally. It was hard to come back, and we never quite did, but when we did I ensured we were secure and all backed up.

New Mars is much bigger though. And the time away was 3 times as bad as us. And you have lost 3 years of records and still have an unreliable login system etc. What built this place and all those elements are no longer here. The other point is, Facebook is the future of these types of discussions. Forums allow for more in depth stuff, but Facebook is where most people are at now. Most Marsdrive stuff goes on there now too. Unless you get all those elements back in place, and the lost posts (and 3 years of lost stuff in this place is bad), it's not going to come back guys. I hope it does, but I think people have moved on.

Thanks for the responses guys. Well, just ideas thrown out there anyway. One thought I had was what if we could do a "Unified Combination" of technologies/systems- perhaps with BDB- A redesign which might allow a mid air launch and horizontal/vertical landing? Sort of a cross between Virgin Galactic's model and Blue Origin model but with nanotech engine materials and fuels to radically enhance strength, efficiency and safety ratings? What I see from SpaceX and these other companies is a good start, but they still don't come close to cracking this problem of CRATS.

We need to focus on small scale tests on all components and materials and fuels in the range of thousands of tests, something these companies and others cannot do. One idea I came across: http://www.microlaunchers.com/ and there are others like JP Aerospace, Sea Launch, etc. Only with mass scale tests will we crack this challenge. An investment consortium would more likely invest in that kind of project which has far reaching applications versus a mission to Mars.

If a mission to Mars cost $100 Million in total, there would be no problem creating a profit/business case. How can we do this?

Good to see the forums back up guys

I just want to clarify a couple of things too. First, the Newmars forums have a depth of discussion and detail and a large list of members they have built up over the last 10 years. But beyond the discussions I am sure there are many members here who hope the Mars Society might adopt some of the ideas here. I wonder if this has ever happened or what role the Mars Society views this forum as useful for? Many here are not paying members of the Mars Society, but just consider the time they have devoted here. If we translated that into monetry terms, this would far outweigh any cash donation.

My hope us that this forum does find a useful purpose beyond discussions but I guess we will wait and see on that. In regards to the MarsDrive site and forum, we did serve as a temporary home for many lost members here for the last year so I hope you guys don't forget about us

We currently have about 320 active members and a couple dozen more regular posters so we have built up over the last few years. We do allow political discussions, and I think that is due to where we are at right now. If we were larger and found it a big problem we might make the same choice as New Mars. But discussions are open and there are no membership fees are needed. Our focus is also slightly different, more on searching for private sector alternative plans for Mars. So don't forget us guys, and I'll keep an eye on how things go here. Overall I think the rebirth of this forum is a good thing for the cause.

I'm not sure if I have posted this here yet but in our new human mission design project we have going and our project site, we have opened a new yahoo groups discussion forum as neutral place for interested people to input without necessarily joining the design team and so you can get a feel for what we are doing with this design. Currently we have 10 in our team and are lead by Ron Cordes a retired Apollo engineer with extensive aerospace experience and we are looking for help in the many different areas this design has. You can find the new discussion group here- http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/marsdrivemission/

Or if you would like to help us in other ways (or have any questions)let us know at info@marsdrive.com

So why do space advocate groups keep on trying to pressure NASA to do their bidding when it is clear that NASA does what NASA wants, NOT what they want? What is the point of having a space advocate group spend all its money and resources on small scale "go nowhere" projects only to have it rejected by NASA 99% of the time? It seems to me that it would be far more useful to direct the energies of the NGO space sector into directly and aggressively supporting new private space efforts. For example, Burt Rutan, JP Aerospace and Armadillo have all made varying levels of progress due to a healthy mix of volunteers and paid workers. I think this is a far better model for doing things than continually banging our heads against the brick wall of NASA only.