I recently read about a Dutch company that’s planning to send a small group of people to colonize Mars. These people won’t be Million Dollar Man types trained by NASA, they’ll be ordinary citizens picked from a pool of applicants (“Hey, man, how did you answer the question ‘Do you get claustrophobic?'”) As you can imagine, it’s a very expensive venture. So, to defray costs the company wants to turn the mission into a reality TV show.
I am so down with this idea. Remember those week-long trips in the station wagon that your family used to take? Remember the mounting tension as the days wore on? Well, for the Mars trip, the small group of amateur astronauts would be packed into an SUV-sized spaceship for eight months.
Thirty-two times the tension of that trip to Florida where your sister threw your teddy bear out the window? No chance of Dad turning the car around? Now we’re talking.
But it gets better. Once the contestants are on Mars, they’ll face an atmosphere that’s far more toxic than the one inside the Kardashian household. Barely any oxygen in the atmosphere, lots of radiation, and an average temperature of -80 degrees Fahrenheit. No Apple stores. Imagine having to do a full suit-up and decompression routine in an airlock just to go outside after your housemate pisses you off.
This show just keeps looking more promising the more you dig. But here’s where it’ll shoot to the rank of all-time Reality supremacy. Picture the company going bankrupt. The supplies from Earth stop arriving. People connected to those on Mars clamor for some national space agency to help out. But citizens everywhere start protesting against another bailout of a private company, especially one formerly owned by some tech-geek billionaire. People had to go along with bank bailouts because they affected the economy, but this is just some guy’s hobby. So you know what happens next?
Yup, cannibalism. The other “final frontier.” The ultimate in reality TV drama. No one could top that.
We totally need this show.
Yeah, but election season’s coming up, so … I’d go.
Are we there yet? -30 Fahrenheit! Pish! Still not as bad a Wisconsin winter.
Cary wants to vote people off Mars. Forrest wants the Kardashians to go. These are all forms of cannibalism too. Well, the Kardashian part is mental cannibalism as that show just eats our brains.. Watch out Thomas. Somewhere there is a producer saying, “What a great idea!”
Reality TV always starts with bad ideas! Fingers crossed!
My sister had no right to throw my teddy bear out the window. It was my bear and it belonged to me. Well, it did until she threw it out the window.
You are mind reading me with those first two sentences, Bill. My teddy bear bit is somewhere in Georgia.
Didn’t somebody want to open a restaurant on the moon? The view of Earth from the bar was going to be spectacular but in the end they decided the place had little atmosphere.
Funny, but your analysis of the potential difficulties and disasters is actually very scary. For the TV show title, how about “My Favorite Martians”?
If I get That Call I’ll go with your idea. Promise. It beats “Keeping Up With The Frostbite.”
Can we please send the Kardashians on this trip? That would be the only time I could stomach watching them.
I love this idea. Hilarious.
Do you think they would vote people off the planet each week?
I think they’d freeze and them for food, just in case. Which in a way is getting voted off.