With Mars One filing for bankruptcy, earthlings can’t be taken for a ride, for now
A reality show of life on Mars as the prime financing method could hardly be taken as a serious business model.
By ET Bureau |
Agencies
Mars One
It was just as well that only three Indians made it to the ‘final list’ of 100 people who would be trained to become the first Martians.
Now that the supposed mission by a private company, Mars One, to set up a permanent outpost on the red planet from 2024 has come a cropper, Martians have been relegated to the realm of science fiction.
Indeed, Mars One has done a very earthling thing by quietly filing for bankruptcy in Switzerland last month. It is a wonder that over two lakh people from around the world queued up for the selection process that began in 2013 given that Mars One provided only very sketchy details of how the colony of 24 Martians would be established, maintained and financed, especially since there was no return option.
Mars One A reality show of life on Mars as the prime financing method could hardly be taken as a serious business model.
Maybe Mars One intended to eventually convince the finalists that they were actually on the ‘third rock from the Sun’ but mistakenly imagined they never left Earth.
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That not only kooks who wanted to reprise Arnold Schwarzenegger’s role in Total Recall went through the selection rounds — engineers, scientists were among those who made it to the final list — and speculation that another financier may step in, reveals a lot about the expanding frontiers of gullibility if not space travel.
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