Apparently 100 questionably adventurous dreamers have been shortlisted to take part in a one-way civilian mission to Mars in 2024. Dutch non-profit organization Mars One is heading up the fairly unrealistic crowd-funded trip, which aims to establish a permanent human colony on the red planet by 2025. Those who successfully made the cut from 202,500 candidates include a 42 year-old high school teacher from Whistler and a 42-year-old volunteer Scout leader from Vancouver.

We realize that turning the inauspicious age of 42 is no great shakes, and the fantasy of leaving your troubles behind and starting anew in some far off exotic locale where nobody knows you has a certain allure. But this is Mars, people. You think being stuck on Earth surrounded by crummy humans is bad? Imagine being stuck with a higher concentration of them under a geo-dome and only having Clif Bars to eat for the rest of your sweaty life. It’s not like you could pull a Cheryl Strayed and hike your troubles away.

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Even more curious is how local media have chosen to cover this quasi-news story.

Throwing all skepticism and common sense to the wind, the Sun, the Province, CTV News and Vancity Buzz all fail to question the legitimacy of the so-called mission with even the slightest mention of how incredibly naïve and unlikely it is that there will be a human colony on Mars, let alone one in 10 years. CTV News went so far as to call the local winners of the Mars fantasy camp sweepstakes “brave,” kind of like how it’s brave of us to volunteer to go on a safari hunting unicorns with only our bare hands. And Vancity Buzz, which has never met a press release it didn’t like, treats the Mars One press bumph as gospel, which isn’t too surprising.

You may recall when the website ran the erroneous headline “1,000 Foot Long Slip and Side Coming to Vancouver,” essentially echoing an online petition trying to drum up support for a massive water slide down Main Street on Car Free Day, without doing the slightest bit of diligence, such as calling the city or the organizers of Car Free Day, which would have revealed that neither had even been contacted by the slide fantasizers and, in fact, the city wouldn’t support such an endeavour anyway because of safety concerns. But why let facts get in the way of thousands of people sharing your inaccurate story?

Mostly, however, we just feel bad for the 202,400 applicants who didn’t get accepted to potentially go to Mars in 2024. That has to be a bit of a kick to an already fragile, slightly warped ego. But if it’s any consolation, those who make the final cut won’t be going to Mars either.

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