I would say that considering someone flaky is not a compliment. I heard that one of the applicants to be in the MARS One crew was 80 years old.
I would consider this to be a flaky person - wacky, unconventional and off-beat. And it makes me wonder about the Mars One selecting team and what their criteria were. There is an extensive list of requirements - with categories resiliency, adaptability, curiosity, ability to trust, creativity/ resourcefulness , and then age (18 or older), medical and physical requirements, country of origin and language.
From Round One: Among the people that were selected to move on to round two, 159 have a master's degree, 347 have bachelor's degrees and 29 have Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degrees. The majority of the applicants are under 36 and well educated.
Round Two: Medically cleared candidates were interviewed, and 50 men and 50 women of the total pool of 660 from around the world were selected to move on. Applicants are mostly from the U.S. The youngest is a 20-year-old and the oldest is 61.
Round Three: The company had intended to have a reality television show documenting group challenges, but no TV deal has been reached. The audience was to select one winner per region, and experts select additional participants. 40 people will be selected.
Round Four: This is the isolation test - the forty candidates will spend nine days in an isolation unit. (that's 9 days vs 7 months it will take to reach Mars). Thirty will be selected.
Round Five: This is the Mars Settler Suitability Interview. Supposedly to last 4 hours, to measure suitability for long-duration space missions and Mars settlement. Twenty-four candidates would be selected.
Then we move on to the section in the Wikipedia article on BankruptcyHERE. The company was permanently dissolved in January 2019 with a total debt of $1 million Euros.
Back to flaky - here's what German former astronaut Ulrich Walter had to say in January 2014, He estimated the probability of reaching Mars alive at only 30%, and that of surviving there more than three months at less than 20%. He said, "They don't care what happens to those people in space... If my tax money were used for such a mission, I would organize a protest."
Two pictures today - one that we will never see on Mars, but can see at a model railroad show. And then Brian's favourite new seedling that won in the Lily Show this summer.
The Mars 100 - this is a group of 100 people who successfully passed the tests to be the first people to go to Mars on a privately-financed mission. It is targeted for around 2031. The plan isn't to return, but to settle there. Yes, this is a one-way journey.
The story began a few years ago. The project was started in 2011 by Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders. The intent is to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Several unmanned missions will be completed, establishing a habitable settlement before carefully selected and trained crews will depart to Mars. There is a roadmap overview of the steps to get there.
In 2013 they started the Astronaut Selection Program. Our speaker Karen Cumming was one of the 100 people selected - 50 men and 50 women. She was a Hamilton Spectator reporter and is currently an author and speaker.
She qualified in the third round of screening. There is one more Round of qualification and then training begins. There will be unmanned flights with supplies and infrastructure. Then the flight of humans to Mars is targeted for 2031.
All sorts of things go into the project and it sparks one's imagination about how things would be done and how people would function there. You can find out all kinds of things at the website HERE. with the tag line The next giant leap starts right here on earth.
Our picture today was done with one of those filters that bends the image - I started with a music graphic made in photoshop.
