{"id":36241,"date":"2013-05-09T12:15:11","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T17:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=36241"},"modified":"2013-05-09T06:50:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T11:50:31","slug":"project-adams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=36241","title":{"rendered":"Project Adams"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the book\u00a0Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,\u00a0<\/em>Douglas Adams described a grossly-overpopulated planet dealing with its problem by radical means. \u00a0The plan involved building two spaceships to fly the population to a better world.<\/p>\n

They built the first one, and loaded up all of the – er, let’s say “less essential” populations; I forget Adams’ list, but today it could be reality TV stars, TMZ-bait, Youtube sensations, Taylor Swift’s exes, and millions of society’s other useless mouths, and shot it into space. \u00a0They were told that the rest of the people would be coming.<\/p>\n

Soon.<\/p>\n

As soon as they finished the next spaceship.<\/p>\n

Honest.<\/p>\n

——–<\/p>\n

A Dutch company is taking applications for a one-way mission to Mars, to start a Mars colony.<\/p>\n

And they‘re getting a slew of applications<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“These numbers put us right on track for our goal of half a million applicants,” said the founder of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp. “Mars One is a mission representing all humanity and its true spirit will be justified only if people from the entire world are represented. I’m proud that this is exactly what we see happening.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the part I found…intrigueing? \u00a0Well,\u00a0deja vu\u00a0<\/em>at any rate:<\/p>\n

According to the company’s chief medical officer, Norbert Kraft, Mars One is eschewing the usual astronaut candidates \u2013 scientists and pilots \u2013 in favour of YouTube fanatics and internet people, “because what we are looking for is not restricted to a particular background.”<\/p>\n

All applicants have to do is pay the application fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 \u2013 in the US, it is $38 \u2013 and then submit a video in which they answer three questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Huh.<\/p>\n

I’m going to run over to Google Translate to see if “Bas Lansdorp” is Dutch for “Slartibartfast”.<\/p>\n

Just a hunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the book\u00a0Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,\u00a0Douglas Adams described a grossly-overpopulated planet dealing with its problem by radical means. \u00a0The plan involved building two spaceships to fly the population to a better world. They built the first one, and loaded up all of the – er, let’s say “less essential” populations; I forget Adams’ list, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-school-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36242,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36241\/revisions\/36242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}