Mission Study · 2050

Ten technical gates stand
between Earth and a
permanent Mars presence.

Each gate is assessed on three axes — where the technology stands today, the quantified gap to a settlement, and the claim most often confused with progress. Six minutes. Every figure sourced. No hype.

Begin the assessment Skip — take the survey
Gates · 10 Est. read · 6 min Status · Pre-operational

The 10 Gates

Sequential, but independently assessed. Each gate shows current state, quantified gap, and the specific claim that is most often mistaken for a solution. Slide to record your concern level before advancing.

Mission Sequence 01 / 10 · Locked
Gate 01 / 10Slide to unlock the next gate

The Mars Intent Survey

Approximately three minutes. The survey separates belief, support and personal willingness — three distinct variables that are routinely conflated in public discussion.

Section 01 · Respondent profile
Q1. What is the highest level of education you have completed?
Section 01 · Respondent profile
Q2. Which of the following best describes your current field?
Section 02 · Beliefs (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
Q3. A permanent Mars settlement is technically achievable within the next 100 years.
Strongly disagreeStrongly agree
Q4. Public funding for Mars exploration and related research is justified.
Strongly disagreeStrongly agree
Q5. Given the opportunity, I would personally be willing to live or work on Mars long-term.
Strongly disagreeStrongly agree
Section 03 · Deterrents
Q6. If you are hesitant about going to Mars personally, what is the primary reason? (Select all that apply)
A global enthusiast project

A volunteer collective,
not a technical authority.

An independent group tracking public technical progress and public sentiment on Mars settlement. No institutional affiliation. No proprietary data.

Composition

The project draws on contributors across several fields — students, engineers, educators, developers, clinicians, designers — with a shared interest in the factual trajectory of Mars settlement.

No office, no budget, no formal title. The working method is simple: public sources, structured review, plain language.

Scope and limits

These statements are explicit because they define the boundaries of what this project can claim:

  • Not NASA, not SpaceX, not any space agency
  • Not engineers, planetary scientists, or professional researchers
  • No first-hand data and no independent verification of any technical plan
  • No timeline and no "Mars countdown"
  • No representation of any government, company, or investor — all figures on this site are illustrative

Every factual claim here is traceable to a public source. Verification is encouraged; correction is welcomed.

Areas of attention

01

Technical trajectory

From MOXIE to Starship, from radiation shielding to in-situ resource utilisation. Tracked, translated, and stated in plain language.

02

Public sentiment

Public attitude is a variable in its own right. What populations believe, and what they would accept, shapes the feasible envelope.

03

Structured participation

If the outcome is to be publicly accountable, public input should be systematically captured — even at survey level.

Objectives

  • Document — convert scattered technical updates and public attitudes into structured, readable output
  • Explain — state the real difficulty and real possibility of Mars, without amplification in either direction
  • Survey — build a public attitude dataset that can be openly examined and cited
  • Connect — allow contributors and interested parties to find one another

Operating principles

Explicit uncertainty

Distinguish between what is known, what is estimated, and what is unknown. Never present a vision as a plan, or a demonstration as an operational system.

Rational framing

Enthusiasm is not optimism; scepticism is not opposition. Disagreement is expected and welcome.

Transparency

Cite sources. Publish what can be published. Invite review.

Long horizon

Mars settlement is a multi-generational programme. Urgency is not a design constraint.

Statement of intent

The project is best described as structured curiosity with a public output.

If human presence on Mars becomes operational, the record should show: the public observed, contributed, and held the process accountable.

Contribute an assessment

No expertise is required. No commitment is implied. The only input is your view.

Privacy

No personal data is collected.

This site does not collect, store, or share any personal information. This statement applies uniformly across all pages and interactions.

Last updated · 29 Oct 2026

Operational behaviour

  • All survey interactions execute in the browser — no data is transmitted to any server
  • No tracking cookies. No third-party analytics.
  • No sign-up, no login, no phone number, no real name required
  • All percentages, rankings and dashboard figures are illustrative, for design and demonstration purposes

Explicit exclusions

  • No names, emails, phone numbers, identifiers, or location data collected
  • No sale, transfer, or leakage — there is nothing to transfer, because nothing is collected
  • No personalised advertising, no user profiling
  • No covert tracking of browsing behaviour

Survey and pledge options

The survey questions, Likert scales and pledge steps are a front-end demonstration. Any input remains on this page and is discarded when the tab closes.

If a future version introduces data collection — for example, to aggregate public attitudes — the purpose, storage method and deletion process will be disclosed in advance, and explicit consent will be obtained before submission. Until then, all interaction is local, temporary, and untracked.

Third-party references

This site links to public material from NASA, SpaceX and other organisations. Following those links leads to external sites governed by their own privacy policies. Responsibility for third-party content and practices rests with those parties.

GDPR and CCPA

For users in the EU/EEA (GDPR) or California (CCPA): no personal data is processed. There is no data subject request to file, no consent to withdraw, and no opt-out to activate, because no data is collected.

If this changes, this page will be updated with a prominent notice and a revised date.

Minors

This site does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. Users under 13 should browse with a parent or guardian.

Policy revisions

Any change to this policy will be reflected in a revised date at the top of the page. Given the current scope, revisions are not anticipated.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or concerns about a potential privacy implication, should be directed via the Contact page. Every message is read.

No data. No friction.

The only input requested is your assessment of Mars settlement feasibility.

Copyright & usage

Copyright & usage

Terms for reading, quoting, crediting and reusing the textual, visual and interactive content on this site.

Last updated · 29 Oct 2026

Ownership

Unless otherwise stated, the text, layout, original illustrations and the interactive "10 Gates" experience on this site are the work of Mars 2050 and its volunteer contributors.

This project is not affiliated with NASA, SpaceX, ESA, CNSA or any government agency or private company. Agency names and programme names mentioned on this site remain the property of their respective owners and are used descriptively, for identification and commentary only.

Where public material is quoted, summarised or paraphrased — mission updates, technical papers, press releases — the underlying facts and figures belong to their original publishers. Attribution is provided wherever possible, with links to primary sources where they exist.

Permitted use

  • Read and share — link to any page, quote a few paragraphs, or forward to a colleague
  • Quote with credit — cite "Mars 2050" and, when possible, the page address
  • Educational use — teachers, students and study groups may reference the material in classrooms and coursework
  • Discuss and criticise — disagreement is expected; substantive challenge is part of the design
  • Summarise — prepare your own summary or translation, provided it is not presented as the official version

Prohibited use

  • Full republication, or presentation of the site as your own work
  • Claims that Mars 2050 endorses a product, campaign, petition or investment
  • Use of the content to mislead — for example, presenting an illustrative percentage as a real survey result
  • Removal of attribution followed by commercial redistribution
  • Implied partnership with any space agency or aerospace company

All figures on this site — percentages, concern rankings, dashboard bars — are illustrative. They exist to demonstrate a reporting structure and to support discussion. They are not a published dataset and must not be cited as one.

Images, icons and typefaces

The visual system is deliberately restrained. Hero photography and gate photography are sourced from openly licensed photographic providers. Interface icons are simple geometric line drawings.

  • Photography — licensed under the providers' public terms; credited where required
  • Line icons — original work; free to reference, not free to resell as a template
  • Third-party imagery — any future additions will be clearly credited to source and licence

Accuracy disclaimer

Content is provided "as is", for information and discussion. Space technology advances quickly, and public information is frequently incomplete, optimistic or outdated. No technical statement on this site is guaranteed to be current, complete or correct.

Nothing on this site constitutes engineering advice, investment advice, medical advice, or a commitment that human presence on Mars will occur on any particular date. A successful demonstration is not a finished system; a published date is not a guarantee.

Reporting an issue

If you believe your work has been used without proper credit, or if you identify a factual error, an outdated figure, or a broken source, please report it. Corrections are made promptly, and credit is added as soon as a gap is identified.

Contact: hello@example.com, or via the Contact page.

Published in good faith

The material exists to support more careful public reasoning about Mars. Use it, quote it, challenge it — but keep the record accurate.

Contact

Direct contact

Corrections, source suggestions, press enquiries, or substantive comments on the project. All messages are read.

Typical response time · 2–5 days

Email

The primary and only maintained channel for Mars 2050:

hello@example.com

No phone line, no live chat, no support desk. This is a volunteer project, and email is the only channel maintained. Response times reflect that constraint.

Appropriate topics

  • Corrections — a figure, date or claim that appears incorrect or outdated; include a source if available
  • Sources & credit — a paper, mission update or dataset the project should be reading, or a credit that is owed
  • Press & media — if referencing the project, include the context and intended use
  • Collaboration — translation, engineering review, design contribution, or a specific skill
  • Privacy & data — any issue relevant to the Privacy and Cookie pages
  • Substantive comment — the question of when humans will actually live on Mars is the project's entire premise

Efficient messages

Specific messages receive faster, more useful responses. Where possible, include:

  • The page or gate the message concerns
  • What was expected versus what was found
  • Any source supporting the point
  • The outcome sought — correction, credit, answer, or conversation

Out of scope

  • Speaking on behalf of NASA, SpaceX or any agency — this is an independent project
  • Confirming launch dates, ticket prices, or astronaut selection
  • Providing engineering, medical or financial advice
  • Accessing, modifying or deleting personal data — none is collected
  • Immediate response — this is a spare-time project

Volunteer contributions

Contributors who can translate, verify facts, review technical framing, improve accessibility, or restate difficult concepts in plain language are always welcome.

No credentials required. State what you can do and how much time is available. The standard is explicit: be precise, be curious, be useful.

Before sending

Do not send sensitive personal information — full addresses, identification numbers, financial details. Such data is neither needed nor retained. For handling of correspondence, see the Privacy Policy.

Substantive input is valuable

Whether the position is that Mars settlement is inevitable or that it is a misallocation of resources, the argument is stronger when stated precisely.

Email hello@example.com
Cookie policy

Cookies, stated precisely

Definitions, current usage, and the practical implications for this site.

Last updated · 29 Oct 2026

Definition

A cookie is a small text record that a site asks the browser to store, and that the site can retrieve on subsequent visits. Common uses include session management, preference persistence, visit counting, and cross-site advertising.

"Local storage" is a related mechanism: a small amount of data retained in the browser. It is not transmitted unless the page explicitly sends it.

Current usage on this site

In short: no tracking cookies are set.

  • No advertising cookies — no advertising is operated, so no targeting is possible
  • No analytics cookies — no third-party visitor counters, no fingerprinting
  • No cross-site tracking — no tracking across sites
  • No login cookies — no account system exists

All interaction on this site — gates, survey, pledge options — remains in the browser and is discarded when the tab is closed.

In-page state

To support the interactive components, temporary values are held in memory while the page is active — for example, the current gate, or the concern level selected. These values exist only on the local device, for the duration of the visit.

They are never uploaded, shared, or used to identify the visitor. Reloading the page or closing the browser clears them.

Third-party embeds

If a page ever embeds or links to external material — a video, a document, a mission page — that third party may set its own cookies under its own policy. Such embeds are currently avoided by design. If this changes, the parties involved will be listed here.

User-side control

Even where no cookies are set, browsers provide full control over all sites. Standard options include:

  • Blocking all cookies, or only third-party cookies
  • Deleting cookies and site data at any time
  • Using private / incognito windows
  • Enabling "Do Not Track", which is honoured by not tracking at all

Blocking cookies has no effect on this site's functionality, because there are none to block.

Policy revisions

Any future introduction of data storage — regardless of scale — will be documented here first, in plain language, with the revision date updated at the top. Until then, the site remains one that collects nothing.

Questions: hello@example.com, or see the Privacy Policy.

Nothing to clear

No consent banner, no cookie wall, no fine print — just the technical assessment and a small number of questions.