Mars - One Way Missions NOT Suicide!

It’s clear that the ‘To Boldly Go’ article written by a couple of big-brained Star Trek fans has been causing quite a kafuffle and scaring a lot of people who care about astronauts. But, Pants feels that it can help calm a few nerves.

We’ve identified the root of people's concern as being the boffins’ proposed one-way missions to Mars, which for those of us who care dearly about the welfare of astronauts is a frightening prospect. But after Pants experts took a closer look at the language used by the eggheads we quickly realized that something had been lost in translation.

All along both brainy’s have stressed that it was important not to see their proposal as being ‘suicide missions’...You see NOT a suicide mission.

It can make all the difference understanding the subtle scientific nuances between the egghead mission and a suicide mission. In the egghead version one is merely required to “stay for the rest of his life” in order to fulfill it, but in a suicide mission one is required to die!

Also, they likened their astronauts going to Mars “with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives” to the endeavors of early US settlers who set out in their wagons with very little prospect of ever returning.

So, we’d like to propose a exercise to help those most affected: Try to imagine the astronaut’s spaceships as being space wagons, it really helps...go on try it!

Here at Pants we feel the missions are a great idea, and coming from people who've always put the welfare of astronauts front and center, it should mean something.

The colonization of Mars is planned as insurance against any future catastrophic event on earth, and that makes complete sense.

The boffins said that Mars would offer humanity a “lifeboat” in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable. Although they don’t go into too much (any) detail on how they’d get us all on the “lifeboat”, it’ll probably involve quite a lot of them. So, lets hope they’ve learned lessons from the past - Titanic - and don't end up having too few, or the space wagons will get really cramped.

Anyhoo, they aim to start by sending two two-person teams in separate space wagons, and due to the NON-suicide nature of the mission its participants will not be returning to Earth, so the teams will include people over the age of 60. Also, as the planet’s radiation would normally damage human reproductive organs, NASA has had to find a man and a woman whose reproductive tackle can survive intense radiation.

Thanks to our source inside NASA Pants can reveal the names slated for berths in the first space wagon as Dancing With The Stars star Bristol Palin's mum Sarah and Joe Leiberman. Their primary task will be to procreate, and start a species able to withstand the planet’s significant radiation. We’ll post the FSSP (factual scientific special picture) showing exactly how future Homo-Martians will look as soon as we receive it.

It is said that between procreation sessions with Leiberman Palin will use the opportunity to study Mars’ lack of an O-Zone, which she aims to use as the basis of a thesis called 'Mars lost its O-Zone without a single Martian driving a hummer', providing proof for her long held position that global warming and the destruction of our O-zone layer has nothing to do with man but is all Mother Nature’s fault and merely a catastrophic natural cycle...just so we know.

We'll keep you up on events as we get them.