One Way to Mars
So I’ve been following the progress of the Mars One project. In case you are unfamiliar with this, it is basically a one-way trip to Mars, with a landing intended in 2023. You can find more information at their site: http://mars-one.com/en/.
I’m really curious if this will get off the ground. They seem to have a solid list of deliverables but will, of course, require an insane amount of expertise and money to pull this off. But setting such practicalities aside, I’m more curious about the kind of person who’d want to take a one-way voyage to Mars.
I think I might have considered this when I was younger. Not sure if it would ever have went beyond the consideration phase though. But for the opportunity to actually be on another planet… it would have been very tempting despite all the obvious drawbacks.
So what about any of you? Would you have applied for this?
(And if you haven’t read the FAQ yet, I found it rather interesting: http://mars-one.com/en/faq-en)
Brent Knowles
Former lead designer at BioWare (Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights). Creator of Raiders of the Serpent Sea.
2 Comments
Robert
Interesting – I get a distinct “human Laika” vibe here. Considering there are seven billion of us, I’m sure a few hundred can be found who want to die for the sake of being in a history book.
Speaking of things hopeless… do you have any initial thoughts on EA’s revival of Ultima?
Brent Knowles
Yeah from their FAQ it seems they are being inundated with requests to join the program. Will be interesting to see what comes of this.
As for the Ultima game I haven’t really looked into it too much but the tagline phrase killed it for me:
“Return to Ultima, and quest with friends in the greatest cross platform action RPG from BioWare”
Multiplayer? Yep… little interesting me. Cross platform… okay, to be expected. Action RPG… meh.
And honestly the “Return to Ultima” part seems weird… only fans of the series are going to know what it means but the second part… the multiplayer and action RPG are unlikely to be sticking points with those same die-hard fans.
I’m not sure which team is working on it (i.e., the BioWare I knew or the other parts of EA that have been folded under the BioWare label). I might be more excited if I knew more about the team but the tagline left me uninterested in going to look into this in more detail.
Also it is not clear whether there’s a party which was a strength of the Ultima series *and* was one of BioWare’s core development strengths. Not sure if the journey with friends bit applies to party members or to other human players. A closer check on the actual website doesn’t make me any more interested.