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)

(Photo: ScreenRant)

Prolific startup investor and jOBS star Ashton Kutcher has news for everyone: he's a total brainiac, not unlike Steve Jobs! The whole time he was playing dumb bro characters in sitcoms like That 70's Show and Two and a Half Men and tweeting clueless riffs on sensitive news stories, he was actually acting.

In real life Mr. Kutcher enjoys conversations about stuff like "circular polarization versus vertical polarization," and he's an early investor in several successful startups, including Skype and Airbnb. "When it comes to the Internet, there's no beating Ashton," his investment partner (and Madonna's manager) Guy Oseary told Elle.

Mr. Kutcher also recently upped his geek cred: Elle reports that he became the 500th person to put a $20,000 deposit down for a space voyage on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo. We hope he takes the opportunity to film a Dude Where’s My Spaceship sequel and laugh (ironically) all the way to the bank.

(Photo: Smosh)

Bad news for everyone who's been dreaming about intergalactic intercourse since those heady tween years: a new study found that sex in space could actually present some rather life-threatening illnesses.

Studies on plant cells showed that processes involved in reproduction are impacted by zero-gravity conditions like those experienced in space. Scientists said this could have major implications for humans hoping to make space babies. "Our findings offer new insight into how life evolved on Earth and are significant with regards to human health, as a traffic jam on these highways that also exist in human cells can cause cancer and illnesses such as Alzheimer's," a Montreal University professor told the Daily Mail.

These findings could have an impact on the space tourism industry, which is ramping up to send private citizens into space as early as next year. Though to be fair, there are plenty of risks associated with earthly sex, so we doubt any humans--or plants!--who want to have space sex will be deterred by a couple of tsk-tsking scientific studies.

Still, we bet somewhere on his private island Richard Branson is weeping over the dangers of joining the "220-mile high club."

(Photo: Terry Irwin, Art Flakes. Prints available here.)

Astronauts may be the closest thing we'll ever get to super heroes, but even they get a little down sometimes. One curious Quora user decided to take to the platform to ask a terribly depressing question: Can you cry in space?

Turns out that you can, but not the way you'd think. A NASA engineer popped into the thread to say that because there's no gravity in space, tears don't fall downward. You have to continually wipe them from your eyes, because "they just pool, obscuring vision." Another user pointed out that it can even be painful to cry in space. So sad :(

Our favorite answer is a little more philosophical:

Conversely, it is impossible to not cry in space. The magnificent splendour of the universe consumes you and leaves you in permanent visible awe. You are tiny. You are insignificant. You are dust. And so you cry.

Nothing like some galactic real talk to make you feel like a weepy astronaut.

Hi there! (NASA Photo: H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the HST Pluto Companion Search Team, Via Wikimedia Commons)

Fun fact: Pluto was named in 1930 by an 11-year-old girl. In the spirit of her christening skills, Wired reports, astronomers at the SETI Institute is asking the Internet to help name two tiny, newly discovered moons of Pluto. They've created a website dubbed "Pluto Rocks!" with a list of possibilities for which you can cast your ballot.

Included are such dignified options as Persephone, for Hades' captive wife, and Acheron, for one of the rivers flowing through the underworld. Here is a cheat sheet for those who did not spend their childhoods pouring over D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths.

On that website, there is also a write-in ballot. We can't believe we even have to say this, but between the We the People fiasco and the elevation of a cat (rather than the obviously superior robot) to the Monopoly canon, we feel we must: Don't submit the names of any fucking Pokemon, or any dumb Internet memes, or Stephen Colbert, or--God forbid--Kim Jong-un. Don't you dare.

These are celestial bodies that will continue to circle Pluto long after your bones have disintegrated into the Earth. Please treat this occasion with the gravity it deserves.

Luckily, the astronomers have already foreseen the biggest pitfall of soliciting the "wisdom" of the crowds, and the ballot stipulates, "Names for the moons of Pluto must come from Greek or Roman mythology and must be related to Pluto/Hades and the underworld."

Unless your cutesy wisecrack is actually a clever riff on the legends of the Greco-Roman ancient world (and remember, Uranus is already taken) please, for the love of Zeus, don't waste their time.

(h/t The Mary Sue)

(Photo: MySpace)

Space tourism isn't just for rich geeks dreaming of some hot man-on-alien action. The Sun reports that Coco Brown, an American porn star responsible for classic films such as Black Panty Chronicles 2 and Big Booty Bomb 2, is training to be the first-ever porn star in space.

Ms. Brown will pay around $100,000 to travel on a commercial space flight chartered by the Dutch company SpaceXC, which makes us wonder: damn, how much does porn pay these days? She'll undergo a series of grueling tests to make sure she's space-ready before the launch, which is aiming to take place around spring 2014.

Despite Ms. Brown's chosen career path, she will not be consummating her first-ever space flight with some zero-gravity sex, so reporters can stop asking about it, okay? "Trying to have sex in space is a little difficult," she told The Sun. "You just really don't have that much control. There would be nothing keeping you together."

Of course, Ms. Brown doesn't intend to disappoint her fans entirely. "Maybe I'll pop my boob out and take a photo of it with the Earth in the background," she said, by way of consolation.

(Screenshot: YouTube)

Gone are the days when science projects consisted of paper mache volcanoes, baking soda and vinegar. Now, budding young scientists are putting your space diorama to shame by actually launching things into space. Kids these days, smh.

CBS News reports that a trio of young ladies at Cornerstone Christian School decided to marry their love of science with their Hello Kitty obsession. So, for their 7th grade science project, they created a homemade rocket, placed a Hello Kitty doll inside, and launched it into space using a home weather balloon kit.

Titled "The effects of altitude on air pressure and temperature," the little geniuses then attached a GoPro camera to the weather balloon so they could film Hello Kitty adorably making her way through space. Bon voyage, little kitty!

(h/t Gizmodiva)

(Photo: Deep Space Industries)

Rocket scientists are cool--have you seen that NASA mohawk guy?--but with the growth of the commercial space industry, they were bound to get eclipsed by swashbuckling adventurers with a mind for intergalactic exploration. Enter the Asteroid Hunter, the newest position of badassery, second only to the child who came to our house dressed as "half unicorn, half rockstar" on Halloween.

Kurzweil AI reports that commercial asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries has announced a plan to launch ships into space to mine nearby asteroids for resources that could help accelerate Earth's development. It's the first mission of its kind, and bound to conjure Indiana-Jones-meets-Captain-Picard fantasies in anyone with a space hero complex.

"More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year," Deep Space CEO David Gump told Space.com. "They can be like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century — a key resource located near where it was needed. In this case, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century. That is our strategy."

The first asteroid hunter spacecraft will be deployed by 2015. That gives us all two years to start training to become asteroid hunters startingggg ... NOW. Race you to Astrophysics 101 on Coursera!

Astronaut. (Photo: flickr.com/edwin11)

The heavens are a bit better decorated today, thanks to the art-loving rocket scientists at NASA. Space.com reports that the agency has used lasers to successfully transmit the Mona Lisa (in digital form) to a satellite orbiting the moon.

The site says: 

The laser signal, fired from an installation in Maryland, beamed the Mona Lisa to the moon to be received 240,000 miles (384,400 km) away by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the moon since 2009.

"This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances," added researcher David Smith in a statement. The idea is to turn the tech into an alternative to radio as a way for interplanetary spacecraft to communicate. That way if Elon Musk ever does decamp to Mars, we could cut down on the time it takes to receive his no-doubt-delightful communiqués from the Red Planet.

Pretty cool! We can't help but wonder, though: Why hurl a painting even humans don't quite "get" into outer space? Pretty sure aliens are just going to assume she's secretly laughing at them.

Now, Mr. Musk has spoken out on his Twitter account saying that, yes, he would like to get tech people to Mars, but no, he is not the red planet's vegan-loving leader.

(Screencap: Twitter)

But sir, Betabeat has one question for you: if you are not the kale eating overlord of Mars, then who is?