Seeking Middle Aged Couple for trip to Mars

Private project would send middle-aged couple to Mars was the headline I read in the paper last month. I jotted it down on my blog idea list. I skimmed the article but and set it aside thinking it might be hard to come up with a perspective because I am past middle-age (and into old age). The idea sat there on the list and in the back of my mind percolating. So last night when I booted up my laptop I figured I’d go to Google and find out just what the age range for middle-age is. There I found in one definition I am just one year out of middle-age and in a couple others I am still middle-aged (albeit still close to the old age end). That’s when I decided to go dig through the recycling and find that article again. Maybe I could come up with a perspective on spending sixteen months in a confined space capsule with my husband after all.

Private project would send middle-aged couple to Mars, why not, I asked myself as I began to read. And here are some of the article’s salient points.

1.    .  The capsule is only half the size of an RV.

2.    .  There are no showers and limits on toilet paper and clothing.

3.      Drinking water is made from crew members’ recycled urine and sweat.

4.      There’s almost no privacy (but on the plus side author of the article mentions sex in zero gravity).

5.      The couple will need piloting skills and skills like McGyver to fix things on the fly.

6.      And last of all, the mission is at least five years away yet.

Upon reflection, I have come to the realization that this trip is probably not for me for almost all of the above reasons.

Then I asked my husband on Skype what he thought of the idea and what follows is part of our conversation (I’m leaving out the zero gravity sex stuff).

[9:09 PM] A Mount: You would have to put up with my crap.

[9:10 PM] Jo Mount: They didn't mention that. 16 months of nasty dumps.

[9:11 PM] A Mount: Remember the movie Joe Dirt? He carried a huge crystalized turd around in a wheel barrow that he though was a meteorite.

[9:12 PM] A Mount: We could be sending turds where no turds have gone before to explore new worlds and new civilizations and we'd be going where no one has gone before - near Mars. 

Thank goodness in five years we’ll be in the wrong age category, for sure.