A One-Way Trip to Mars? Professor Millsapps Signs Up

Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Photo of Jan Millsapps

THE NEW YORK TIMES -- Where NASA-style flight plans are designed on the Apollo moonshot model of round-trip tickets, the “one” in Mars One means, starkly, one way. To make the project feasible and affordable, the founders say, there can be no coming back to Earth. Would-be Mars pilgrims must count on living, and dying, some 140 million miles from the splendid blue marble that all humans before them called home.

At 64, Jan Millsapps, a professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University, is among the older candidates on the Mars One list.

“I’m at a point in my life where I’m ready for a new adventure,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m running away. It’s more like I’m running toward.”

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