Mars One is a private spaceflight company that wants to establish a permanent facility on Mars. How? With the power of reality TV, that’s how.
At $25 a pop, 20,000 people have applied for the project and sent in their audition tapes. Yes, that’s right: 20,000 people paid money to apply for a project that claims it will send people to live on Mars permanently by 2022. Furthermore, this application process involved shooting an audition tape, because Mars One plans to raise the $6 billion it needs for the first (of several) trips to Mars by turning the whole thing into a reality TV show . . . and by charging people who apply.
Of course, most people in the audience realize that the secret to good reality TV is letting unskilled egomaniacs onto Hell’s Kitchen and The Apprentice, but that doesn’t seem like a winning formula for a company that genuinely wants to send people to the red planet.
Either way, 2022 might see the bounds of reality TV pushed into space, or the organizers of Mars One disappear to a Caribbean island somewhere with large bags of cash. Either way, prepare to be entertained.
[youtube width=”640″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tgkyUBkbY[/youtube]
[More details from Space]
