You Decide...

...if the Dutch start-up company "Mars One" is looking for the best and brightest or dumb and dumber.  "Mars One" has announed that they are "dead serious" (their words) about sending four astronauts to land on Mars by 2023 (seven years ahead of NASA's projected date).  Dutch reality show to offer one-way tickets to Mars

Now to be fair to NASA, those seven years are pretty darn critical ones.  See I'm fairly confident that NASA is hoping to return their astronauts to earth and apparently those seven years are going to ensure that.  Not so much with the Dutch - theirs is a ONE WAY TRIP!

I get wanting to be first to Mars.  What I don't get is why anyone would be willing that this adventure would be their last.  Reality TV and fame aside, there must be a gazillion book deals, movies, action adventure toys from which to gain additional notoriety, to say nothing of the money to be made by someone willing to venture out into space.  Captain Kirk wouldn't have made much of a ding in our collective "space continuum" if he and the Enterprise had flamed out on their initial voyage.

I do, however, totally understand WHY "Mars One" is taking this approach.  As the mechanical engineer for the project (Bas Lansdorp) states, "Funding will be made possible through the media spectacle built around the adventure."

There's a sucker born every minute.

~attributed to (if erroneously) P. T. Barnum, American showman, businessman and scam artist

~later, tw (not going to Mars - sooner or later)