Dutch reality show offers tickets to Mars

Mars

wikipedia-Alkuin

Mars One, a Dutch television show, starts searching for four volunteers to travel on a one-way ticket to Mars in 2023. The show will film the volunteer's journey all through training and after landing on the red planet, seven years ahead of the NASA target.

Before the mission, Mars One will design a habitable, sustainable settlement designed to receive new astronauts every two years. Mechanical engineer Bas Lansdorp, the main person behind this ambitious attempt, estimates the whole project will cost around $6 billion.

No one has ever tried to put humans on the red planet as scientists question whether radiation exposure would even allow men to survive the trip. However, Dutch Nobel laureate in physics in 1999 Gerard 't Hooft backs the mission and claims that Mars One will actually make it. The Dutch Space Society has also called the project "a visionary idea to combine media and aerospace".

Critics, however, suggest the reality show, just as any show of the kind, is more focused on profit than on the scientific aspects of the project.