Suicide Mission to Mars?!

Is this real or a joke?  No matter, I will be keeping track of Mars One’s mission to send humans on a one way mission to Mars within 10 years in September 2022   .  Mars One is a company cofounded by 35 year old Dutch Bas Landsdorp.  Their introductory video on YouTube shows the participation of 1999 Nobel Prize winner theoretical physicist, Dr. Gerard T. Hooft, so these guys aren’t f*cking around.  And they have signed letters of intent from major aerospace companies around the world to supply Mars One with material and equipment for this mission.  The funding will be entirely from the private sector, and Mars One will turn this into a Big Brother type reality show unlike anything we’ve seen.

40 people will be selected through a global lottery to train in a mock colony in a desert somewhere soon.  The final team will be whittled down to 10 individuals.  The reality show will begin with the selection and training process, and be a major source of funding for this endeavor.

And just what obstacles does Mars One have to overcome to make this trip a reality?  By the way, I just realized this mission does not have to culminate in a success for Mars One to be successful.  The trip to Mars will take seven months.  Even half of that would provide adequate footage for a lucrative reality show.  Imagine the sponsors who would line up for a chance to hawk their products during each episode watched by billions?  So if heaven forbid, the Mars One space team blows up mid flight, Mars One’s business idea does not.

Anyway, Todd Halvorson published a September 2^nd, 2012 article in USA Today, titled “Landing People on Mars:  5 obstacles”, and those obstacles are:

Muscle and bone loss from being immersed in zero gravity, cancer from radiation exposure, and a whole host of other bio breakdowns, e.g. impaired vision.  But that’s if it takes the 2-3 years Mr. Halvorson assumes using today’s technology.  Mr. Halvorson is thoughtful enough to suggest remedies to all of these potential problems, except sex.  The National Academy of Sciences has reviewed NASA’s Bioastronautics Roadmap, and discovered “human sexuality was given no consideration”.  Fear not with Mars One’s version of the mission.  Reality shows thrive on that one aspect of human biological tendency, and Mars One producers will make this a priority to facilitate, with multiple cameras in a smoosh room for this purpose, a al Jersey Shore.  In fact, I’m willing to bet without a smoosh room this trip will be a no go.

We hope much success to Dutch entrepreneur Mr. Landsdorp and his Mars One company.  Heck, I’d seriously consider employment at Mars One given the right opportunity.

Stop pumping kids full of arithmetics – there’s a better way, a review of "How Children Succeed", by Paul Tough

This is not just a book about changing public policy to give impoverished kids the best chance to succeed.  All parents can put the theories of enhancing success factors to work for their children by focusing on character traits such as conscientiousness, grit, delayed gratification, persistence etc.  These non-cognitive skills – and Mr. Tough characterizes them as skills because they are malleable and prone to influence through early intervention – are just as much predictors of success as cognitive skills.  The conventional view of pumping with and measuring child development on the basis cognitive skills, e.g. IQ is outdated.  How well your child can persist when faced with mundane and often unrewarding tasks is more important.  The ability to delay gratification is important, and in that regard, Mr. Tough cites a famous Marshmallow experiment conducted years ago, whereby kids who were able to hold off eating a marshmallow for the promise of eating two became more successful than the ones who forgo the reward.

This very important and entertaining book is about solving the mystery of predicting “who succeeds and who fails”, and there are strong indicators that conventional wisdom may not hold.  Mr. Tough draws on numerous unconventional U.S. educational programs such as KIPP focusing on non-cognitive skills of  children from high stress and adversity familial background, and what methods they have employed to close the gap with children from affluent background.  There are intriguing studies from diverse topics such as chess and nurturing lab rats to explore the neuroscientific and psychological basis of the arguments presented as well.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Link to a September 7th, 2012 WSJ article on this book:  Opting out of the rug rat race