Can't wait for the remake of The Searchers.

All dressed up in your spacesuit, with nowhere to go? Perhaps it's time to put your self-promotional skills to work. Space.com reports that Mars One, the Dutch group hoping to fund a permanent human colony on the red planet by turning the whole dog-and-pony show into reality TV, will begin accepting applications by July.

Space.com says:

"'We expect a million applications with 1-minute videos, and hopefully some of those videos will go viral,' Mars One co-founder and chief executive officer Bas Lansdorp told SPACE.com.

Mars One now has 45,000 people registered for its mailing list and has already received 10,000 emails from interested individuals, Lansdorp added. The organization will unveil more details about its astronaut selection process at a press conference in New York City on April 22."

There will be a small application fee to weed out the jokers, with rates lower for poorer nations.

So far, 45,000 have signed up for the group's mailing list, and Mr. Lansdorp said they've also gotten 10,000 emails from "interested individuals." The plan is to, by 2015, whittle down would-be contestants to a group of 24 willing to take a one-way flight to Mars.

We're sure if you want to recycle your Real World audition tape, that would be a-okay.

(h/t the Verge)

Can't wait for the remake of The Searchers.

Let's face it: Most of us aren't going to make NASA's rather stringent cut for the space program. So how's a girl supposed to fulfill her destiny to rule Mars as Red Queen, given that that the  planet is, at best, 33.9 million miles away?

Well, here's an idea! Mars One, an organization that hopes to create of a Martian settlement by turning the whole kit and kaboodle into a reality TV show, just posted its requirements for would-be settlers. And there is good news for those of us who flunked precalculus: 

Unique to all other space exploration endeavors before it, Mars One is opening the astronaut program to anyone on planet Earth that meets the base criteria. It is not necessary to have military training nor experience in flying aircraft nor even a science degree.

Applicants do need to be smart and "in good mental and physical health," and you've got to be willing to devote eight years to the necessary training. Otherwise, the requirements are more along the lines of what you might find on an online dating profile than in a NASA checklist:

Applicants need to be at least 18 years of age, have a deep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust. They must be resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful. Mars One is not seeking specific skill sets such as medical doctors, pilots or geologists.

Yeah, can you imagine spending years on an interplanetary flight with someone who couldn't stop talking about rocks?

(h/t Venturebeat)

That's some lonely country.

Elon Musk isn't the only entrepreneur with his gaze fixed firmly on the horizon of the Red Planet. My Fox New York reports that a Dutch company named Mars One wants to put humans on the alien world's surface by 2023. Not only that, they'll be a very special brand of human: Reality TV stars.

No, the company is not simply strapping Jill Zarin to a rocket and waiting for the inevitable rating success. Think of their proposal as more like an Astronaut Idol, or So You Think You Can Dance (On the Surface of Mars). The aim is to create a "global media spectacle" and thereby fund the project commercially:

They hope a worldwide audience would help pick the teams of settlers, follow their training observe the trip, and pay for it.  The mission is estimated to cost $6 billion.

It's probably a lot easier to sell "crazy" to advertisers than than venture capitalists.

The plan is to send the colonists on a one-way trip, leaving them to establish a habitable settlement. And they've got to make it work, because there's no ride back, and there's no friendly natives waiting to teach them about maize. Every two years, another crew of astronauts arrives to join them.

So instead of booting aging stars when their rivalries get repetitive or their schtick tired, they'll simply remain on the show, forever and ever. So the producers better choose wisely.

Here's the video pitch: