I feel I’ve arrived late to the party because I just discovered plans are well along to recruit people to settle the planet Mars starting in the year 2022.
The plan is to send a small group of people every few years until a community is built. Costs will be defrayed through TV broadcast of the proceedings as a reality show, and in addition to being famous the Mars pioneers will have the opportunity to live out their days in the dim light of a dry, cold, airless world!
Did I say “live out your days?”
Yes, there’s a spoiler alert – you don’t get to come back! But that makes sense, because adapting to the Martian gravity will weaken your muscles and we already know that living in space reduces your bone density, so a return to Earth in your later years would just be an oppressive, painful ordeal.
Which, of course, your later years are bound to be anyway.
Clearly this creates a wonderful opportunity for people who truly hate the lives they currently have on Earth. You might as well die on Mars. This is so much better than hospice!
You’re the first Earthling to die on Mars. What does your tombstone say?
Trail Baboon 
“She just had to try everything once.”
Morning all… I have moved to camp, so feel like I am also in paradise. Sitting on balcony listening to birds like I’ve never heard before. It’s been raining here so the smell of the air is unbelievably fresh and clean. Tea in a bit then out for our safari drive. So sorry to see that the temperature has not improved for most of the trail baboons!
Did BBC meet? What is our next book?
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sounds wonderful sherrilee, ehr birds here are kind of hopping around with their shoulders schrunched looking for seed below the feeders. we hve gotten to the point in the winter that 20 feels warm. i love that about minnesota.
bbc was a small gathering. jacque and lou stopped by on a social call bearing food and wine and linda came in loaded for bear with books food and wine and that was it. linda will hopefully have taken notes on what we are reading/ o thought i put them in my amazon shopping cart to hi the buy button later on but they are not there.
on my gravestone… i told you so
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I was hoping to come but decided babysitting the twins so daughter could take a nap was more urgent.
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Good one, VS. So, are you going to sign up for a trip to Mars?
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I would like to add, VS, that even though you are a person who has to try everything once, I hope you will not sign up for the one way trip to Mars.
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No Mars for me. I’m pretty sure my heart would expire as the rockets started to lift the space ship off the pad.
However, I did try South African cream soda today. It’s not quite as sweet as ours, but it’s green!
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Try an Amarula on the rocks.
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Good morning. First of all, I don’t think anyone should go on a one way trip to Mars. I can’t understand how a project like that is getting funding. Secondly, I don’t have any need to tell anyone what to put on my tombstone. However, I will try to come up with something. How about “Let the Good Times Roll”.
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I bet they find the funding easily. I read on cnn today that 200,000 people have signed up so far!
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I’m having trouble with the idea of making any kind of irrevocable decision. We still make young folks promise to love each other forever, or as long as both shall live, in spite of what we know about life and love. But everyone understands that those promises cannot be enforced. That’s nothing like the commitment implied by going to Mars when there is literally no way back. I spent much of my life as an editor. I can’t get rid of the deep-down impulse to edit and improve decisions I made earlier. I love editing. I am terrified of any decision that can’t be edited.
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Interesting, Steve. It has me thinking about my own struggles with not having a reliable internal editor! Given this, I suppose my tombstone would read; “If she thought it she said it”.
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🙂
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I will borrow wise words from my grandmother, “Well, that’s done.” She said this after weddings, after holiday meals, after finishing a project. It was merely a statement of fact. We strongly suspect, given that she died apparently in her sleep (fully clothed – we think she got up in the morning, go dressed and laid back down for a brief nap), that they may have been her last words.
OT – So sorry to hear about the floral woes, Clyde. That’s pretty stinky. And those aren’t the words I’d like to use, but this is (sort of) polite company.
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Considering that they couldn’t make the Biosphere project work here on this planet, I have miniscule hope for Mars colonies that would need to manufacture and recycle atmosphere and water in a cost-effective manner. But, if it did work, I’d probably say something like, “She lived the dream of her people,” in a nod to the generations of SF writers who dreamed of life on Mars. Either that, or I’d cull some appropriate quote from either Ursula LeGuin or Ray Bradbury.
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How about a quote from the original “War of the Worlds,” by H.G. Wells?
“Dying’s none so dreadful; it’s the funking makes it bad.”
Seems appropriate.
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“She followed the card again.” No, wait – there was no crowd. I would never be there.
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That was supposed to be “followed the crowd”, which you no doubt figured out, but I’ve been doing more of that lately, and it’s troubling.
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“On the whole, I’d rather be on Saturn.”
Chris in Owatonna
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Like!
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One of the many wonderful chapters from “Martian Chronicles.” “There Will Come Soft Rains.”
Click to access therewillcomesoftrainsbradbury.pdf
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Just checked back in to see I am incognito, thanks to dear ol’ lovely WP.
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I want those tiny robot mice to tidy up at my place.
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Her lies the body of poor Renee
She came to Mars and now she’ll stay
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🙂
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The photo does not look unlike SW ND.
(I have to log back in for every post.)
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Talk to you all tomorrow. Off to bed as I have a 5 a.m. wake-up call and have to be dressed and down to the jeep by 5:30!
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Oh poor you.
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Yeah, you have my sympathy, vs. Hope you’re taking lots of photos while I’m defrosting the locks on my car door.
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🙂
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“There’s no way out of here.” and that’s the truth, I think! Or as I recall seeing on an atheist’s gravestone: “All dressed up and nowhere to go.” In the end, I’m glad that I’m not a candidate for a Mars colony, unless, of course, the government decides to rid itself of all its retirees, in which case I might well be shipped off without my consent. I can see it now, the adds for the retirement paradise on Mars extolling all the amenities of the Elder Pioneers’ Rest Home.
I’m wondering who the 200,000 people already signed up are. Disillusioned young folks or bushy tailed whippersnappers looking for new frontiers to explore and exploit? Sometimes I’m so glad I’m past any ambition of greatness.
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That’s what Dylan said. No way out.
http://youtu.be/YanjY9CsPDQ
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Heck, if I was going to spend years and years traveling one way to some far flung planet, I would at least want it to be as interesting as, say, Tatooine, in Star Wars, or something from Star Trek!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv_LmgHczg8
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Here lies Edith
Who found that a one-way ticket to Mars
Was better than being a jailbird all her life.
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A lot of you are making me smile today.
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