> > Brunnen-"was explaining to Stephen the other day how I missed out on a chance to go and work in Antarctica -- ANTARCTICA!!!! -- just because I didn't leave school at 15 and become a janitor. Blah."G
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> Interesting. I was just watching a Nature show on Antarctica's McMurdo Station out near the Ross Ice Shelf. Let's see, temperatures there can reach a balmy 8°C in the summer, and a bracing -50°C in the winter. There are five months of total darkness followed by five months of 24-hour sunshine. On-land wind speed occasionally reaches 100 knots (185 kph. The Katabatik wind can reach 400 kph, apparently). All that darkness/brightness, cold, hostile atmosphere, and isolation is ideal for training people for space missions. I bet highly introspective persons who can handle being alone are probably designed to rule in Space.
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> Wolfspirit

So maybe this explains why we haven't made it to Mars yet. It takes a lot of teamwork and combined brain power to put together such an event, but if the people who truly want it to happen work better alone, that presents a problem. I imagine most of us think it would be "cool" to go on a space lark, but when it comes down to it, I don't know if we'd all be so hasty to jump on a spaceship. Consider the conditions that Wolf just described, and then imagine yourself being subjected to training so harsh that it makes you physically ill. Add to that the fact that you would be leaving the comfortable place known as Earth, and you might be thinking twice about it.

I'm not saying a trip to Mars is a bad thing, and I'm also not saying that we should forget about trying to put mankind on other planets. However, I think Dave unintentionally made a good point with these two Mars threads. Who (generally speaking) really, truly wants to go to Mars? And who does not?

Ell"Wouldn't mind taking a spaceship to New Hampshire"myruh