45 Years Later...

Today is the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the Moon and Armstrong & Aldrin's moonwalk. Interestingly, my personal memories of watching the event on TV are a bit fuzzy , because I was woken by my Dad to watch it (it being well after my 8:00 bedtime).  Being such a big space fanatic as I was at the time, I don't know how it came about that I didn't lobby long and loudly to be allowed to stay up until the landing happened.
In school, we watched all the launchings and spashdowns on TV. My friends and I would pretend we were the astronauts during those moments. (One of my best friends was named Allen Bean, so Apollo 12 was a big deal for us.) During recess, the slide and the monkeybars became our lunar modules. I spent endless hours with my Major Matt Mason, Mattel's Man in Space action figure and accessories. The astronauts were my heroes and I couldn't wait to become one of them.
This lunar landing anniversary, a lot more media attention is being paid to Apollo 11, with more video and pictures popping up on popular websites than I can recall seeing in a long while. One evening this week, I was looking at some newly released still pictures from the Apollo missions that were not the usual subjects: a picture of the lunar module still nestled in the rocket fairing, taken from the command module as it maneuvered around to dock with and free the LEM; a picture of the lunar module as it ascended from the Moon, chasing the CM in order to dock so the crew could return home.
I got a distinct chill looking at these and similar pictures, this time. The men in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were doing things that had either never been done before or had only been done once, twice, or a handful of times before. Exiting the capsule for a spacewalk, tethered by just a cord? Maneuvering multi-ton craft in zero-gravity and docking with another craft? Making a soft landing of a space craft (not splashing down or making essentially a controlled crash)? Any of these things could have gone disastrously, leaving the crew drifting uncontrollably until they ran out of air, crashed, or burned up in the atmosphere.
The reason for my chill? Because, as a candidate in Mars One's astronaut program, I may one day get to attempt similar feats never before attempted by humans. Traveling beyond lunar orbit. Transiting across interplanetary space. Making a soft landing on another planet. All these will be firsts. All of them hold the potential for disaster.
I hope to display the same courage and grace under pressure that the astronaut heroes of my childhood had.

I won't attempt here to explain all the details of Mars One's plan to put permanent settlers on Mars.  But in summary, the audacious project will use technology that already exists or is in development to launch the first crew of four people to the Red Planet in 2024.  That's 10 years to iron out everything: getting to Mars, landing on Mars, and living on Mars.  And all of this is being coordinated by a private, non-profit organization that does not build any of the equipment itself.
Is this nuts?
I don't think so.  It is a longshot; a very big longshot.  Once you remove the engineering and costs associated with returning people to Earth, putting people on Mars becomes a much simpler and cheaper exercise.  The linchpin on which everything else hangs is money.  In my estimation, getting the funding will be the biggest hurdle to success.
Mars One is pursuing some very non-conventional avenues to help secure funding that, additionally, raise public awareness of the project and get people to feel engaged in it, a part of it.  A recent Indiegogo campaign raised $313K from over eight thousand funders.  Most controversial is the plan to raise funding by producing a show that follows the candidates throughout the testing and selection process, and follows the astronauts' lives on Mars.
Again, is this nuts?
Again, I don't think so.  I believe that people will have a great interest in the kinds of people who are willing to leave Earth forever.  I think they will be interested in the technology. And I think they will want an honest look at living off-planet, the kind that NASA-filtered media has not provided over the last 50 years.  Thoughts?

Pro tip...

So apparently the first thing one must do when creating a blog is to remember that you have created it, and that you need to write in it.  Blog posts don't write themselves.  Huh.  Who knew?

Living in the future!

     "It's great, living in the future."  I don't know how widespread this meme might be, but it is a relatively common observation among my friends.  This has become increasingly true as our smartphones pick up more and more capability: GPS, personal assistants, location awareness, voice dictation, etc.  Couple this with the sheer amount of information the Internet puts at our disposal, and you have a 1960s futurist's wet dream.  All we're missing are jet packs and space colonies.
     Which brings me to the point of this blog.  (A): I don't think we'll get jet packs because flying one of those would scary as hell.  (Stop and visualize it.  You're flying at least higher than most two-story houses.  Look down at your feet.  See what I mean?)  and (B): I'm trying to become a permanent settler on Mars.  Seriously.  
     If I can muster the discipline to post here regularly, this will blog will look at how life is getting more Jetsons-like all the time and how visionary groups like Mars One and SpaceX are pushing the envelope even more.