Goodbye, I'm off to Mars
November 20th 2010 11:45
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Vyoos news
Am I insane for wanting to fly to Mars? One way?
I have always dreamed - and I am talking a dream spanning more decades than I care to name - of going into space. The dream has been consistent in that it would be a voyage of discovery. No moon shot this. We are talking real space - out there where it is a very long way between rest rooms.
So very far that I have always understood that it would a one-way trip.
And this week, in a newspaper report which made my brain spin and my eyes light up like a supernova on New Year's Eve, a real voice from a man I don't know entered my dream
The man's name is Dirk Schulze-Makuch. That's a name which would grace any science fiction story, but Dirk is real and so, suddenly, is my dream.
Dirk is an academic at Washington State University, and he has co-authored an article in the American Journal of Cosmology titled "To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars", which suggests that mankind can speed up its exploration of Mars if we start thinking in terms of a one-way trip for the first humans to go there.
This, Schulze-Makuch said, would save a lot of money. He proposed sending two spaceships, each with two people aboard, all those people to be aged in their 60s. The spaceships would serve as self-sustaining living quarters upon arrival on Mars, and these four people could then start the exploration process while, Earthside, they got on with the development of bigger spaceships to follow, when ready, with bigger settler groups.
It's in no way outrageous because humans have been setting off on one-way journeys of discovery ever since they flopped out of the oceans and developed legs. There would be no Hollywood today without intrepid adventurers setting out from the east coast in search of the fabled Tinsel-la.
All these thoughts raced through my head as I read about Dirk Schulze-Makuch's idea.
I will be 60 in three years. They won't launch before then. I want to go! I've never flown anything more technologically challenging than marijuana, I'm not exactly a natural at engineering or handymanery, and I have no experience of zero-gravity survival, but what does all that matter if I have been dreaming of this for more than 40 years?
Nobody on Earth is more mentally prepared for this than I am.
I would write to NASA immediately, pointing out the brilliance of the Schulze-Makuch idea and volunteering my services, but I had better attend to a couple of details first.
One is to tell my daughter that I'm leaving and not coming back. It should be okay. We are always telling young people that it's good to follow your dreams, and that's all I'm doing. And while I probably won't be coming back, she's young and, apart from having a famous, if now distant, dad, there's every chance that spaceship technology will advance quickly enough for her to come come visit me one day.
My mother and siblings and friends I can deal with too, which leaves just three big problems. Two of them are my dogs - it will be very hard saying goodbye to them. The third problem is my wife.
Here, saying goodbye isn't the issue. The issue is convincing her to come with me. It might take a while. As far as I know, she's never had a dream about going into space. One way.
seattleweekly.com, timeslive.co.za; image: NASA
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