Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

"Polyakov underwent medical assessments before, during, and after the flight. He also underwent two follow-up examinations six months after returning to Earth. When researchers compared the results of these medical exams, it was revealed that although there were no impairments of cognitive functions, Polyakov experienced a clear decline in mood as well as a feeling of increased workload during the first few weeks of spaceflight and return to Earth.[6][7] However, Polyakov's mood stabilized to pre-flight levels between the second and fourteenth month of his mission. It was also revealed that Polyakov did not suffer from any prolonged performance impairments after returning to Earth. In light of these findings, researchers concluded that a stable mood and overall function could be maintained during extended duration spaceflights, such as manned missions to Mars."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov

Which country are you a citizen of?

You will recall that I didn't use the term "third world" in the first part of my first comment in this thread, but categorized countries in two other categories, at least one of which could definitely include countries that aren't part of the Third World. My use of the term came after an edit to the comment, in which I wrote, "I've asked before here on Hacker News how many of the participants here have ever even lived in (not just visited, but lived in) a third-world country. Not many have."

your post is extremely condescending.

Could you please explain in detail what part of my post you were reading when you reached that conclusion? You see, I have done what I suggested in my post. I have lived in a country where I wasn't born, where it was nearly impossible for me to gain citizenship, where the language(s) spoken were not my native language, where the climate was different from the climate I knew in childhood, where the cuisine was very different, where the level of wealth (then) was low. In that country, when I lived there, secret police assassins killed not only dissidents in that country, but even dissidents from that country who had settled in the United States to live. The ruling political party owned all but one of the newspapers (in that newspaper, it had just a half share) and all of the television stations, and it tightly controlled radio broadcasting and book publishing and motion picture production.

There was a lot of censorship and internal spying there, but local people told me their stories of their aspirations for freedom. I learned which ideals of the ruling party could be turned to embarrass the ruling party as it spied on me and other foreigners while we discussed what we were learning about life there from our local friends. I spoke there in open public speeches (in the official language of that country, which I was there to learn) about how life in the country could be improved for the common people by actually allowing freedom and subjecting the rule of the ruling party to the discipline of a free press and free and fair elections. Those things happen there now. I still have many friends there. What is condescending about desiring that the common people of every country achieve their dreams?

The problem with trailer parks is not the trailers; it's the other people

and the ownership model. It's a terrible ownership model, really; you usually own a (not actually mobile) manufactured home, but you rent the land.

The screwed up thing is that when the rent goes up in the park, the value of your mobile home drops, making moving even harder.

I'd be happy to live in one of the bay-area mobile home parks if the ownership model of the land was more like the condo ownership model, where the tenants own the common areas, well, in common.

But yeah. "who else is on the trip" would certainly be my first question, but I would imagine that you'd mostly get interesting people.

Heh. It sounds like a lot of fun, really. I mean, in 2022, I'll be 42; I mean, I'd need more information, (and I might be disqualified just for not being immediately ready to jump, but eh.) but it does sound like an incredible way to spend the second half of my life, even if it ends up making that second half, uh, significantly shorter.