Are you batshit crazy enough to sign up for a one way ticket to start up a human colony on Mars? If so a Dutch company called Mars One may well be the best thing that has ever happened to you!
The company is calling for applicants to be over 18-years of age, in good physical shape who have a good grasp of the English language and possess good survival skills.
Mars One aims to land its first group of astronauts on Mars by the year 2023 and then will subsequently film a reality television show based on their efforts to colonise the barren, unforgiving wasteland of the red planet.
A rough estimate of what it would cost to put together a mission of this magnitude comes in at about $A5.9 billion, which Mars One spokesperson Bas Landsorp has conceded is a lot of money, but not an insurmountable sum.
“It sounds like a lot of money. And actually it is a lot of money. But imagine what will happen when the first people land on Mars. Literally everybody on the globe will want to see it,” Landsdorp said in a recent New York press conference.
The venture has reportedly been endorsed by Dutch Nobel laureate winning physicist, Gerard ‘t Hooft, who suggested something similar in a book he wrote in 2008.
“The concept fits in with my own ideas about human exploration of space, which I described in my book, Playing with Planets,” said ‘t Hooft in a recent interview. “I became convinced that human flights to Mars could become a reality within 10 years. So in the end, I said yes.”
Some of the cons of Mars One’s proposed Mars mission include the contestants inability to return to Earth, the small living quarters and the lack of food on the dry planet. Not to mention the potentially lethal radiation levels they could be exposed to upon landing.
The obvious dangers seem not to have been too great a deterrent though, as apparently over 4000 people have already signed up to take part in the program.
While I think the whole idea is kind of stupid, if they do pull it off that is definitely one reality TV show I would watch!
Imagine how much better it would be then say season 400 of The Amazing Race or The Biggest Loser: Cousins.
Image: Getty
