In my day job, I'm managing technical projects much smaller in scope and technical complexity than Mars One and they can easily span 2 years and for a variety of legitamite reasons can run over budget or be late. So the fact that Mars One is working to deliver and work with technology that is unproven and is bringing an astronomical (pardon the pun) number of risks to the table that need to be managed gives me reason to believe that it will be very late from it's proposed schedule. First step to making me a believer is to see if they can even accomplish the proven technology aspects: such as launching a Communications satellite to orbit Mars 5 years from now.

The biggest risk to the project is if they can find a way to extract water from the Martian soil and refine it into a useable form for the intrepid Mars Hosts. (other risks like rover not being able to build the mars one colony outpost, the astronauts not successfully landing, the outpost buildings not functioning successfully are actually lower in priority in my opinion, )

I have much more confidence in the Lunar Mission One project because it's using already proven technology (we have landed on the moon before, we have sent rovers out), with one stretch goal - to dig deeper than what we've done before.

Martin, Thanks for the move (with all the purchases likely to be made over the years, I suspect this is a forum subject that might have legs?)
glad you walked it to the general thread

Zaid, That's an intresting tagline on your T-shirt, like Martin I somehow feel this might not be a flyer but I have no real worries with LM-1
(except perhaps getting the funds up to what is needed to make and launch it, although I'm sure LM have done their homework on
these figures)

Alex, I really need to read more (it's all about time & preferences I suppose)

Paul - I agree with yout regarding Mars One vs LM1

My recent purchases were some "rocks" from space Friday last week. Small piece of Tissint (8mg) from Mars and very small fragments from a St. Louis meteorite and some Libyan desert glass. 2 weeks earlier some more space rocks, a couple of very small fragments (3mg) from the Claxton meteorite that hit a mailbox and a 51g NWA XXX (unclassified but genuine meteorite found in North West Africa that came from space). Plus a kids space torch with various images from NASA for my 3yr old to shine on his ceiling. And 2 spray painted themed pictures. Ask me again in 3 weeks time and I'll have a new list from visiting CosmicCon in Manchester. Astronauts and meteorites galore along with loads of space themed memorabilia.
Stephen

Update: my latest purchase is I just supported the LightSail Kickstarter Campaign and have bought myself a 1cm square on the LightSail that will fly into space next year

s.co4878 wrote: My recent purchases were some "rocks" from space Friday last week. Small piece of Tissint (8mg) from Mars and very small fragments from a St. Louis meteorite and some Libyan desert glass. 2 weeks earlier some more space rocks, a couple of very small fragments (3mg) from the Claxton meteorite that hit a mailbox and a 51g NWA XXX (unclassified but genuine meteorite found in North West Africa that came from space). Plus a kids space torch with various images from NASA for my 3yr old to shine on his ceiling. And 2 spray painted themed pictures. Ask me again in 3 weeks time and I'll have a new list from visiting CosmicCon in Manchester. Astronauts and meteorites galore along with loads of space themed memorabilia.
Stephen

Where do you put all that stuff