The Many Rants of Larry Russwurm

Let me first explain that I am shocked that I am able to find holes in the majority of the Mars One potential astronauts’ brief interviews. It’s true that one of my best debating tricks is to let the other side speak until they say something that I can hang them with. But this usually takes patience and a long time. These would be astronauts are largely unaware that they are sticking their feet in their mouths so quickly and easily. This is an important part of their character – to me, they are incapable of seeing the danger they are putting themselves in.

One of the main reasons that I am bothering with this “Death Watch” thing is that I don’t want to see family or friends volunteering to go on one of these missions and thus dying prematurely. Do I think I am going to stop the Mars One missions? Probably not. And, as a critic, I am largely making the mission sound more dangerous and thus exciting which is going to make the sale of any reality show both easier and giving them bullet points for promotion. Some people like watching a train wreck.

I believe there is a strong possibility Mars One will fall apart, all on its own. Raising 6 billion dollars, even with the biggest reality show of all time, is a large challenge, one that could kill them all on its own. Keeping costs under that 6 billion dollar mark, is very hard to do for something that has never been done before. Keeping on time with everything is challenging and like I said before they’ve already slipped a couple years in their prognostications.

But this post is being written to mock the Canadian would be Mars One astronauts. Let us proceed.

Edmontonian Christy Foley starts this off by having said, “Everyone dies on Earth. It’s boring. I would get to die on Mars. We’d probably live a lot longer on Mars than Earth, though. It’s a much healthier environment and there are no cars to run over you.”

She is guessing that Mars is safer than Earth. It’s just that on Mars you need to recycle and produce enough air, water and food – things that Earth produces on its own. I don’t think she has figured out the dangers between the two worlds properly. All the machines that the Mars colony will use will need to be working well at least for the rest of Foley’s life. A total breakdown of a machine and its backup redundancy might well kill the colonists.

I believe she is totally wrong about this risk assessment and should be scrubbed for any missions. Why? Simply because someone who is scared will probably do a better job of maintaining the machines that will keep the colonists alive.

The following is a quote from the linked article: “Torontonian Stephen Fenech, who’s single, says he may be overqualified for the Mars mission.”

Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear about the previous colonization of Mars. Or the colonization of the Moon. Or to be actually overqualified, the colonization of the surface of Venus.

Claude Gauthier says his wife has veto power over his going to the red planet. Wow. What a startling degree of commitment he shows to the Mars One mission. Shouldn’t the decision have been made before applying?

We will close with Marina Miral. She spouts a common folk wisdom that a lot of Earthlings seem to believe. They think there is nothing left to explore on Earth.

Does she think she’ll discover the grand canyon of Mars or a Niagara Falls? All those macro natural wonders have already been discovered by satellite mapping. The sort of discovering Marina might do on Mars will involve machines and scientific techniques. In other words, the methods of discovery that are still yielding results on Earth. There are still ways to explore on Earth, too.

So there you have it. Canadian potential astronauts for Mars One are just as flawed as the rest of the world’s would be colonists. I’ll try one more article about these astronauts – next time I’ll try to find flaws that the American candidates are spouting.