Mars One has serious flaws, alleges astrophysicist shortlisted for one-way trip to the Red Planet

New Delhi: Dr Joseph Roche, one of the 100 shortlisted candidates for the much hyped Mars One that aims to set up a human colony on Mars, sees some serious issues with the project. Roche is an assistant professor at Trinity College's School of Education in Dublin, with a PhD in physics and astrophysics.

In a post on Medium by Elmo Keep, who had also previously questioned Mars One, Roche is quoted as saying, "I have not met anyone from Mars One in person."

"Initially they'd said there were going to be regional interviews... we would travel there, we'd be interviewed, we'd be tested over several days, and in my mind that sounded at least like something that approached a legitimate astronaut selection process," he says. The selection process at the end turned out to be only a 10-minute Skype call.

Roche says he is also not aware of any candidate being ever interviewed in person to assess their suitability for any deep-space mission. Keep, in his post, says Mars One's testing methods fall well short of NASA's stringent astronaut corps requirements.

"That means all the info they have collected on me is a crap video I made, an application form that I filled out with mostly one-word answers," (in addition to the Skype video call that didn't include any rigorous psychological or psychometric testing). "That is just not enough info to make a judgment on someone about anything," Roche says.

Keep, in his post, also highlights other anomalies in the Mars One project. "Many media outlets continue to report that Mars One received applications from 200,000 people who would be happy to die on another planet when the number it actually received was 2,761," Keep says.

He goes on to list other issues that he sees with the ambitious project.

"Mars One has almost no money. Mars One has no contracts with private aerospace suppliers who are building technology for future deep-space missions. Mars One has no TV production partner. Mars One has no publicly known investment partnerships with major brands. Mars One has no plans for a training facility where its candidates would prepare themselves. Mars One's candidates have been vetted by a single person, in a 10-minute Skype interview."

We have reached out to Mars One regarding the allegations and will update this post on receiving a response.