When Jason finally got back to his apartment, he put his stuff away, poured himself a glass of sweet iced tea, sat down in front of his computer, began searching for all the information he could find on the "Mars and Back" program and could find very little, aside from the press releases and opinion editorials. Most of the editorials expressed high hopes and tried to spin the goal of going to Mars and returning as the next great advance for mankind in space travel.
Private companies had already begun developing multiple use rockets for space travel, in an effort to build a station on the moon for both the mining of minerals from the moon and to be used as a "way-station" for deeper space travel.
The Federal Government was deeply involved in all aspects of the proposed construction in orbit and on the lunar surface. They had recently started a new branch of the military called Space Force and were already testing servicemen and women for the physical and mental rigors of space travel and long duration life in space.
Jason was able to find lots of articles, obviously put out by the government, which were not-so-subtle recruiting articles for the new Space Force arm of the military. The focus of the articles was obviously written to attract the brightest and most adventurous of graduating high school and college students.
Jason silently hoped that there were some athletes among the STEM students, as he was certain that agility and good hand and eye coordination would be essential for any "space-bound" military unit.
Jason had been noticing an increase in violent protests around the country about a lot of political issues. The Liberal party "was up in arms" about losing the Presidential election to the Conservative party and were actively seeking ways to remove the current President from office. Jason didn't think that any real changes were going to take place on the political landscape but, was determined to keep an eye on the situation and be prepared for a worse case scenario in any event.
Jason spent the rest of the remaining days before the start of the suspension study cleaning, watching the news and bringing his living space into meticulous order. He began going out daily and doing a small amount of Thrift Store shopping every day, buying items that didn't use electricity to preform a desired task. His favorite finds were a mechanical pocket watch and a Timex mechanical wrist watch which functioned perfectly and only needed to be wound regularly to continue to function.
On the last two nights before Jason was due to enter "stasis" he was mildly troubled by dreams of being in space and seeing asteroids passing by planets, altering their trajectories and crashing into the Earth like rain.