It’s not a crime to dream big or even dream unrealistically. It might be a crime, however, to try and profit from such dreams knowing full well how attainable the prospect might be. While Mars One hasn’t been sued for any illegal activities, it has, from day one, been labeled a scam.

It wasn’t an aerospace company, had no hardware, no patents, or even the money to push things forward.

Half of Mars One, the for-profit British public limited company that was bought by a Swiss financial firm in 2016, is going to be liquidated. The company was declared bankrupt last month, which mostly flew under the radar. There is no word on the non-profit Mars One Foundation, which could continue to exist. Not unless those who invested in it decide to now sue it to oblivion.

We "sort of" are in a space race, just a fucking weird one.
 
Right now SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) are in a race to be the first private company to send people into orbit. Its coming down to a photo finish too with both companies projects only separated by about a month for the planned milestones (SpaceX currently in the lead).
 
On top of this is the "race to Mars". Russia, China, the ESA, the US, SpaceX, and technically India (though admittedly they know their limits and have no intention of being first) have all announced plans for manned missions to Mars. One could theorize Blue Origin is as well, but that's harder since Bezos doesn't really brag about what they are up to or have planned as much as Musk does. It's a weird setup between all these 'competitors'.
 
Russia has a well developed space industry...but they have no money (I've seen some estimates say that up to 10% of the money devoted towards their new cosmodrome has disappeared due to corruption/graft) and they are running into problems where that "well developed space industry" is suffering a brain drain as all their older engineers retire and there's not been a terribly sexy image for new engineers to join the program since the bulk of it has largely been "We have a 50-60 year old design that's worked so far. You are not to change it. Just build another.".
 
The ESA has a decent amount of cash, a good science base, but overall is lacking on useful lift capacity. They don't really want to team with the US if they don't have to because they've gotten repeatedly burned by a change of government in the US ending multi-billion dollar projects that had been in the works for years/decades. There WAS muttering way back about the possibility of a joint ESA/Russia venture, with the ESA providing most of the funds, but the last ~3 years of diplomatic relations have definitely put the kibosh on that.
 
China is actually very well positioned to participate in this race despite their relative inexperience in the field. They have some decent boosters for lift capacity and they have gained recent experience with orbital space stations (which strictly speaking aren't that drastically different from a ship when you get right down to it) and some interesting technologies (inflatable modules. Pioneered in the US, but Bigelow [sp?] Aerospace has pretty much fallen apart, so it's a dead tech here other than the demonstrator on the ISS). They certainly have the money to do it if they wanted. It is hard to put any real estimates on them though because they are more secretive than Blue Origin when it comes to advances. There's a non-zero chance that the first everyone outside the country will hear of serious progress on their manned mission to Mars is their announcement that the ship and crew will be launching shortly. All that said, the Chinese space industry is in a bit of an uproar at the moment due to SpaceX's reusable tech success. A paraphrased rare quote from someone in the Chinese space industry "We thought we were doing quite well, a capable rocket that anyone could be proud of, and then here comes along SpaceX and shows us that we've been playing the completely wrong game for the last ten years.".
 
The US space program via NASA has the goal of reaching Mars, currently via the Space Launch System (SLS). Unfortunately as time goes on the multi-billion dollar cost of each SLS launch sits there like a glaring sign of shame, especially when compared with the prices that both SpaceX and Blue Origin have floated for what their nearly-equivalent rockets will be capable of. In the last 6 months actually we've seen a lot of indications from NASA that many are interpreting as the gradual push to accept that NASA may never actually use the SLS and instead will quietly shut it down and devote the funds to buying seats (or even whole vessels outright) from SpaceX and BO. Somewhere in there is Boeing/ULA making grandiose statements about how the first man on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket, except that other than their participation on the SLS, it's not looking so hot. The odd thing with the SLS is that even when it finally launches a manned crew for the lunar flyby/landing missions, it's not actually done and ready yet. There's later revisions planned that will have the thrust capable of reaching Mars. Not quite a full redesign, but a decently complex one. I'd put it at an even chance that NASA will buy seats on the first private rocket so that way a "real astronaut" can be part of the mission. (As a side note: It is an interesting question as to if NASA could outright prevent someone from launching if that company refused to let NASA lead the mission on the companies equipment. Strictly speaking the FAA is who controls launch clearances. NASA regulations and guidelines generally only need to be followed if you intend for NASA to be a customer.)
 
India has made great strides with their space program, becoming the first nation to successfully reach Mars with a probe on their first attempt (both the US and Soviet Union first attempts failed). They seem to wholeheartedly acknowledge that they aren't really part of the race, they just want to get there eventually and I look forward to seeing how things go for them.
 
On the private companies, it's hard to gauge Blue Origin because as I've said, they don't really ever talk about what they are up. They are behind SpaceX in terms of developmental/institutional knowledge and experience despite a few nice sounding milestones. Yes, they were the first private company to send a rocket into space and land it for later reuse, beating SpaceX by a few weeks or so. However...their rocket went straight up and straight back down. This is an extremely easy flight path for such an endeavor. SpaceX's rockets which reach space and land for reuse are actually throwing payloads into orbit and require a significant technological challenge in the form of dealing with an extremely high ground speed vector and for being a rocket several times the size of the BO system. This is why you'll hear SpaceX/Musk say "First Orbital Class Reusable Rocket Landing." or something to that effect. Clarifying that while they weren't the first, they were the first with a useful system. Now, all that said, we do know that BO is in a rapidly progressing test program that is achieving milestones...it's just that the general public is largely unaware of what those achieved milestones are and how quickly they were reached. Other than their lack of practical orbital experience, I'm mostly trying to say that BO is secretive enough that no hard conclusions can be determined. My personal money is that they won't be the first, but they could quite well surprise me.
 
SpaceX (and full disclaimer here: I'm definitely a SpaceX fanboy) is currently out of the various discussed 'competitors' the furthest along with the possible exception of the SLS development depending on where exactly along its timeline it really is in its ever changing timeline/phases. In the last week SpaceX has tested their Raptor engine which is to power their Starship crew module and celebrated that the test unit has achieved the thrust levels necessary for Starship operation, and they haven't even pushed it to its limit yet (namely: They have not yet done a test of the rocket using 'deep cryo' fuel. This is fuel which is extra cold, meaning more dense, and thus more powerful.). The BIG risk factor for SpaceX however, is that with the exception of the experience they are gaining working on the Crewed Dragon design with NASA, they do not (to my knowledge) have any experience with a variety of technologies which Starship (and the planned Martian colonies) will require. Namely life support technologies. In theory a lot of this can be obtained through the various contractors and design information that is all related to the ISS, but they haven't talked a lot about it. Or rather, it's possible they have quietly mentioned a few things here and there, but a space toilet isn't as sexy as a new rocket engine.
 
So overall, we've got an interestingly full roster for the Space Race 1.5 (first company to orbit a manned craft) and the Space Race 2.0 (first manned mission to Mars). A final hilarious point to mention with this, is that if we assume that various teams are roughly equivalently further along in their projects, then a ridiculous possibility is upon us. Namely...orbital mechanics favors no one. We are all starting from the same rock and trying to get to the same rock. The abilities of your engine will determine your launch window, but for the most part for the shortest flight path the launch window is the same for everybody +/- a couple weeks (again, depending on your vehicle's specs)...which means that if a group of say the SLS, SpaceX, and China's program all were ready for the same orbital period...they'd all launch within a few weeks of each other and we would have an actual literal space race on our hands. (Which is honestly terrifying in a way. Crews/countries would be MIGHTY tempted to perform longer burns and have smaller fuel margins if it meant being the first.)
 
tldr: We actually ARE in a space race, and we might actually have a literal race on our hands in the future.