Blog | If you could send someone on the one-way trip to Mars planned to launch in 2024, it would be?
100 people have been selected as finalists in a sort of sweepstakes derby to be chosen to take a one-way trip to Mars:
This round of eliminations was made after Norbert Kraft, Mars One’s chief medical officer, interviewed 660 candidates who said they were ready to leave everything behind to venture to Mars. The applications were open to anyone over age 18, because the organization believes its greatest need is not to find the smartest or most-skilled people, but rather the people most dedicated to the cause.
Even the astronauts on the International Space Station switch out every couple of months and go back home to family,” Kraft said in an interview with The Post in January. “In our case, the astronauts will live together in a group for the rest of their lives.”
Of the 50 men and 50 women selected for the next cut, 38 reside in the U.S. The next-most represented countries are Canada and Australia, both with seven. Two of the candidates were 18 when they applied in 2013; the oldest, Reginald George Foulds of Toronto, was 60.
Those folks volunteered for the trip, with the rationale that each of us is going to die any way, either on Earth or somewhere else.
But if you could pack up a few people and put them on that aircraft, knowing they’d never return - never to get on your nerves about politics or the criminal justice system or past relationships - who would they be, and why?
I have a couple of people in mind (and wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few had me in mind).
More background:
This story was originally published February 18, 2015 at 8:13 AM with the headline "Blog | If you could send someone on the one-way trip to Mars planned to launch in 2024, it would be?."