200,000 people applied to be one of four people to travel to Mars, never to return, never to fornicate again, but to begin colonizing the red planet (after roughly eight years of training, and filming for a very ambitious reality series). Last week there were 660 volunteers remaining, and this week the Mars One team have announced that there are 100 finalists.
The training will be documented in a reality TV show, but The Guardian got first crack at interviewing some of some finalists. But while we are talking about space exploration here, and people who are willing to be in a tight, enclosed space for years, and vocally prepared to never see family or friends ever again, The Guardian had sex on the brain: do you realize you could never have sex again? Do you have sex? How would you manage to not have sex ever again? Do you masturbate?!
The focus on sex is because it would be prohibited on the mission due to risk of pregnancy and the inability to deliver a baby in space, or on Mars. English physicist Ryan MacDonald says he's never even kissed and only masturbates to reduce the probability of prostate cancer (he can also rattle off the decimals of Pi for longer than we can keep track, and he's a physicist; do we need to see the 99 others? Prepare him for space!).
From this 100, six teams of four will be selected to go into training, and they will train until 2024, when, cruelly, one gang of four will be chosen by the general public via a reality TV voting system. So they'll also have to be good at telling jokes, too.
Mars One is not only striving to be democratic, but the voting system is part of its funding. Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp has seen this project funded through corporate sponsors, crowdsourcing, and profits from the series that will theoretically air for at least years. and is funded through a combination of corporate sponsorship, crowdfunding, merchandising, and (in theory) profits from the resulting reality TV series. The idea of a televised contest to colonize Mars is science fiction, almost become science reality. To make it individual, as opposed to country, is just one more indication that business and celebrity knows no border.
[via Daily Dot]
