Comments on the MIT Assessment of the Mars One Plan

The MIT assessment of the Mars One mission plan reveals design assumptions that would cause significant difficulties. Growing crops in the crew chamber produces excessive oxygen levels. The assumed in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) equipment has too low a Technology Readiness Level (TRL). The required spare parts cause a large and increasing launch mass logistics burden. The assumed International Space Station (ISS) Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) technologies were developed for microgravity and therefore are not suitable for Mars gravity. Growing food requires more mass than sending food from Earth. The large number of spares is due to the relatively low reliability of ECLS and the low TRL of ISRU. The Mars One habitat design is similar to past concepts but does not incorporate current knowledge. The MIT architecture analysis tool for long-term settlements on the Martian surface includes an ECLS system simulation, an ISRU sizing model, and an analysis of required spares. The MIT tool showed the need for separate crop and crew chambers, the large spare parts logistics, that crops require more mass than Earth food, and that more spares are needed if reliability is lower. That ISRU has low TRL and ISS ECLS was designed for microgravity are well known. Interestingly, the results produced by the architecture analysis tool - separate crop chamber, large spares mass, large crop chamber mass, and low reliability requiring more spares - were also well known. A common approach to ECLS architecture analysis is to build a complex model that is intended to be all-inclusive and is hoped will help solve all design problems. Such models can struggle to replicate obvious and well-known results and are often unable to answer unanticipated new questions. A better approach would be to survey the literature for background knowledge and then directly analyze the important problems.