Of all the developed nations of the Earth, the US has the largest population. Of all the second round Mars One applicants, the US has the most. So it was with some surprise that I found this article interviewing some of the applicants. This was the only interview I found on the internet and it only interviewed four people.
First up was comedian Lauren Reeves. In her video application she is obviously playing obtuse for humour purposes and thus gives no indication that she does or doesn’t understand anything. So I can’t fault her.
David King and Brent Bos give short interviews that I also didn’t find fault with.
George Hatcher mentions that no ISS astronaut is bored. I think this is flawed reasoning when applied to the Mars One’s six month flight in very cramped quarters. You could give them busy work but too much stress for too much time is as dangerous psychologically as boredom. Pointless busy work runs the risks of both camps. The mission has bigger psychological hurdles than the space station.
And that is all I find wrong with the American candidates. I found more fault with the Canadian interviews of last time. As a Canadian this shocks me. We rely on Americans to say 9 times as many stupid things as we say because they have 9 times our population. This makes us feel superior as indicated by Rick Mercer’s ‘Talking to Americans’ specials. I am at a total loss of what to do when the US takes our strategy and just lists less information than we do.
If the usual Canadian strategies fail, we never fail to stick our noses up in the air and say ‘We’re more European’. But this fails badly when the interviewees from France and Britain are even more fault friendly than the Canadian representatives.
So I’ll let the smug Americans end this post with a link to a video of Lauren Reeves’ attitude juxtaposed against her more serious fellow applicants to Mars One.
