Call me crazy, but a one-way trip to Mars just isn't my idea of a good time. Being one of only four people within 50 to 400 million kilometers and eking out a techno-subsistence farm on a freezing ball of rock without an atmosphere? Pass. But maybe you agree. Maybe instead of calling me crazy, you would prefer to direct your incredulity to Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch entrepreneur, who expects to begin collecting applications in the next few months.
But for all that, if he can find four people as crazy as he is, this nutball plan could (bah-dum-bum) fly. His secret? Two words: American television. Mr. Lansdorp plans to film and televise the process from training, to launch, to landing, and through the foundation and development of the Mars colony. The full NY Times article on the project, called Mars One, can be found
here.
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| Look, Ma! I can see my house from here! |
Can you really fund an interplanetary expedition through something as banal as reality TV? Sorry, silly question, of course you can. Even without our modern addiction to the stuff, Mars One would draw an audience: three times the population of the US at the time tuned in for grainy pictures of the first man on the Moon; adjusted for population growth, that's nearly a million viewers. Plus, these days we have way cooler cameras - now you can watch the new season, so to speak, of Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before, in high definition! With a soundtrack! And surround sound! (And exclamation points!) So it should be much more appealing to those who grew up with tech toys (read: kids these days). Not to mention, the whole thing will be reviewed by an editing team before it airs, so you won't have to watch the boring parts : P
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| Will kids on Mars get robots for pets? Here, Rover! |
Of course, the real question is, what will the racial makeup of the crew be? Will the writers (sorry, I mean mission planners) succumb to TV Tokenism? Or is that just an American trait, and Lansdorp the Flying Dutchman is exempt?
Interesting post here, Derek. Great voice throughout, even if analysis can go a little deeper. Why so few posts this term?
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