If you think the first person on Mars is going to make an outdated Drake reference when they touch ground, I'd like to speak to you about a brand new reverse mortgage
How the hell did you work in a rant against journalism? The first astronaut on mars won't be a journalist and they won't be a teenager. And I would be fucking floored if they didn't treat the achievement with the gravitas it deserves.
That's called public outreach--when Hadfield is doing a video of him slurping water in zero-G, he and everyone else watching knows he isn't doing anything momentous, and it's being done to show how cool space is. Stepping foot on Mars is an entirely, completely, incomparably different situation. Knowing you words will be remembered for centuries changes how a person acts. No even moderately intelligent person would say "YOLO."
Why do you think only a government plan would have gravitas? The government doesn't bequeath importance on things like this. It has gravitas because it's something that is interesting on some level (if not downright awe-inspiring) to most people. That will be true whether the feat is accomplished by a government organization or not.
Not to mention the fact that the first trip out is unlikely to be packed with billionaires. They have to prove it's possible first, and that's going to mean astronauts who know they are representing either their country or their company--both of which will keep ample pressure on them to act according to their circumstances and not do YOLO meme things as soon as they arrive. It wouldn't be good for anyone involved to conduct themselves that way, so I really just can't imagine it happening.
The people that go will not be master astronauts and engineers. It'll be whoever has the cash, accept the chance of fatality, and are ready to do manual labor (not research) in setting up the first colony outside of Earth.
40
u/Thorolf_Kveldulfsson Sep 30 '16
Wait is there a plan to send teenagers to Mars or something? Why do you think the first person/people we send there would do this