Trip to Mars via Big Brother
Reality TV show company to track 705 hopefuls vying for one-way ticket to Red Planet
Amateur astronauts competing for a one-way ticket to Mars must demonstrate the supreme physical and psychological skills that will enable them to survive the harshest conditions ever encountered by humans.
Endemol, the creator of is to turn the “world’s toughest job interview” — for selection of the first humans to establish a permanent settlement on Mars — into the ultimate reality show.
The privately funded Mars One mission aims to land 20 people on Mars by 2025. More than 200,000 people worldwide applied to join the first human colony on the Red Planet where they will set up home in inflatable pods. The ticket to Mars, where the temperature is -60C and the atmosphere has so little oxygen it cannot be breathed, is strictly one way. However, Mars One, led by Dutch businessman Bas Lansdorp, will send extra crews every two years to expand the pioneering colony.
The cost of the first mission is expected to be around £3.6 billion ($7.1 billion) and funds will be raised by selling exclusive broadcasting rights to the mission, built around a global “style event”, after selection and training of the hopefuls.
Applicants have been whittled down to 705 candidates, 418 men and 287 women, including two Kiwi women — Auckland teacher Nicola Fahey, 31, and Masterton woman Kristy Flower — who’ve been shortlisted for a personal interview. In the next stage, prospective Mars settlers will have to dedicate eight years of their lives to full-time preparation for the 480 million-km mission.