DUTCH NONPROFIT MARS ONE has named 100 people who will remain in the running for a one-way trip to Mars, expected to leave Earth in 2024.

I happened to catch a ‘pundit-cast’ on television the other day, where the participants were horrified to learn that people would actually volunteer for a ‘suicide mission’. I can’t help but wonder what they would have thought when the Pilgrims left Europe to found the Plymouth Colony in 1621. Or when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon in 1969 -- there was no certainty that they would be able return to Earth.

If Mars One had been a going concern 50 years ago, I might well have been one of the many volunteers.