“You didn’t read your Heinlein, did you? That’s why it pays to take more electives, whether you need them or not… Professor Moussaieff’s Science Fiction 405 should’ve been a must for you last semester. I’ve audited it five times over the years…anyhow, in Stranger in a Strange Land, the fictional Mars mission included four couples, since that was the number of people best thought to be able to stand being with each other on a long space journey, without ending up killing each other along the way. Less or more than that was deemed unsuitable. Of course, fiction being fiction, complications are needed, and all eight people end up dead anyhow, but I suspect this mission’s crew compliment has more to do with storage of food and fuel for a rotating eight-man crew than anything else. Besides, I h
