Mars attracts

Boston Globe ^ | 12/22/05 | Irene Sege

[KevinDavis]

CAMBRIDGE -- Back when Joseph E. Palaia IV and the former Melissa Blom were college sweethearts in New Jersey, at a time when most new couples in love think of being together, not apart, he told his future wife that if she wanted to be with him she'd have to let him leave for several years to live on Mars.

''In fact, it was a criteria. She needed to accept the fact that I'm going to Mars one day," Palaia recalls. ''This is who I am."

Palaia is a 26-year-old MIT graduate student who recently cofounded 4Frontiers, a company dedicated to the permanent settlement of the red planet, and, in the meantime, to consulting and creating a model Mars village in Florida or California or New Mexico that could double as research center and tourist destination. He's an Eagle Scout born after the last manned mission to the moon and before unmanned missions to the fourth rock from the sun. He's a student of nuclear engineering -- which he'll need to ''arrive, survive, and thrive" on Mars -- who grew up watching ''Star Trek" at the supper table and imagining himself in space.

[KevinDavis]

[Txshep]

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I AIN'T SINGING NO MORE, I'M RECCALLING ALL MY RECORDS AND CDS AND THE WORLD ACCORDING TO LIBERAL ENEMAIC VERBIAGE CAN ALL GO TO HELL.

Phat Slimus Whitman, the Dean of Mytochondriactic Sooweeicide