Point taken. I realized after finishing the book that they probably screened all the psychologically fragile people out of the program early on; you'd have to be made of tough stuff and aware of the possible risks before embarking on such a journey.

I didn't like this book largely because it left a huge subject untouched: isolation and loneliness. I was waiting for desperation to creep in the longer he was deprived of human contact … full paranoia by the end of the book ("did someone move that rock while I was asleep?"). But our hero is largely unaffected by this…