Photo credits: (NY Post, 2018)
The sources of the funding and the background of the supporting companies. The controversies of possibilities of the mission failure due to lack of technology, funding, and human potential.
As we know that Mars One is a non profit organization and it raises its funds from other companies. However, not many people know that there are total of two organizations that Mars One is made up of:
2. Mars One Ventures: for-profit company which holds the exclusive monetization rights around the mission (Mars One team, n.d.). Basically it manages the funding for the project advancements.
Speaking of the revenues for the mission, Mars One has four resources through which they will have the financial support they need to successfully implement all the four phases of the mission on time (Mars One team, n.d.):
Mars One CEO, Las Bansdorp, in a meeting with the President of Bulgaria to discuss about the technological support that Bulgarian government can provide (Mars One tweet, 2018). See the tweet here.
Mars One Merchandise!
Five years ago, an article was published by MIT in which an MIT engineers' team suggests that the project may have a very big setback. They assessed the Mars One's feasibility and suggested that the organization might have to reconsider their technical feasibility and availability.
“We’re not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible, but we do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made.” - Oliver de Weck, Team member of MIT engineers group (Draper, 2016)
Hear from the founders of Mars One about the Crowdfunding campaign started in 2013.
(Mars One team, 2013)
The people's support for the Mars One mission reflects a different story. The Mars One doesn't rely on crowd funding, it is rather a way to involve the world into this mission (Lansdorp, 2013).
Further stated by Lansdorp that by the end of this campaign, it raised 413,436$ through the contributions from 8151 people all around the globe
References
Draper, L. (2016, March 08). Astronaut Chris Hadfield Questions Feasibility of Mars One Mission. Retrieved from https://www.newsweek.com/astronaut-chris-hadfield-questions-feasibility-mars-one-mission-289160
Lansdorp, B. (2013, December 10). Mars One - First Private Mars Mission in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mars-one-first-private-mars-mission-in-2018#/
Mars One team. (n.d.). Mars One Funding Model - Finance and Feasibility. Retrieved from https://www.mars-one.com/faq/finance-and-feasibility/what-is-mars-ones-funding-model
Mars One tweet. (2018, March 27). Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp recently had the honor of meeting with @PresidentOfBg Rumen Radev to discuss Bulgarian technology and Mars One! A big thank-you to Ambassador @beatentusscher and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bulgaria for the support. pic.twitter.com/vx34KC7zpI. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/MarsOneProject/status/978772169156153345
NY Post. (2018, July 24). Mars will make closest approach to Earth in more than a decade. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/mars-will-make-closest-approach-to-earth-in-more-than-a-decade/