Like all teenagers, Alyssa Carson has had to make some hard choices. But as a 17-year-old in training to become the first human on Mars, hers have been more difficult than most.
While most people her age are deciding where to go to college and what to major in, Carson’s internal monologue has been a little more fraught: To seize my lifelong dream of making it to Mars, am I willing to sacrifice the chance to start a family? Opt never again to see the ones I love? Agree to undergo surgical procedures, give up an organ or two, or put myself at higher risk of cancer? Squeeze myself into a confined space with strangers and agree to be hurdled across an empty abyss for six months? Nine? How about three years?
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