"We could send senior-citizen volunteers to the Red Planet, where they could spend their final months conducting experiments, laying the groundwork for future permanent settlements and digging their own graves." That's from this great piece at Scientific American in response to the op-ed Lawrence Krauss (a Scientific American columnist) wrote in Monday's Times about sending astronauts on one-way trips to Mars. Apparently, the greatest obstacle to man's visiting the red planet lies not in launch capabilities or guidance systems or the threat of Martian attack, but rather in the dangers posed by exposure to the sun's powerful radiation on the return flight. Building a strong enough shield is impractical; it would have to weigh 400 tons. Thus the notion of going up there to stay.

"The idea of a one-way trip has been kicked around for years," writes news editor Philip Yam. "I first became aware of it some 10 years ago, when Sci Am editor George Musser brought it up at one of our story meetings. As our resident Mars-ophile, George said he would go once and for all, without hesitation-and he was the only one on staff at the time who would. An informal poll of 12 others on staff this morning revealed two other yays, albeit with the general qualification of not having much to live for on Earth."

Man, and these people are among the journalists who still actually have jobs! The rest of the article is really funny, too, as Yam imagines receiving tweets sent by the magazine's Mars bureau "during a voyage of possibly 200-plus days in an enclosed environment with the same small group... Day 175: I can't believe I'm going to be buried with these people."