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100,000 People Want To Go To Mars. Permanently.

by Nuzha Nuseibeh

In what sounds like the questionable premise to a sci-fi movie but is actually real, over 100,000 people have now signed up for The Mars One Project: A one-way trip to colonize the Red Planet. On reality TV.

The multi-billion dollar project — whose mission, according to their website, is "to establish a human settlement on Mars" — offers the opportunity for anyone who's happy to leave Earth for good and literally live in space. If you're older than 18, you're pretty much set.

The cost? If you're American, you're looking at a fee of $38. For Mexicans it's only $15. To travel through the galaxy.

The company said it sets the price according to the gross domestic product of each nation."We wanted it to be high enough for people to have to really think about it and low enough for anyone to be able to afford it," the company said.

For the crew, though, the mission will cost around $6 billion. And the way it'll be funded is via the media, which will pay for the rights to broadcast the documentation of everything the astronauts do, from their pre-mission training to their actual colonization of Mars. According to the website, the company intends on "making it the biggest media spectacle in history." Survivor meets Star Trek meets The Truman Show.

Of course, not all of the 100,000 applicants will get to go. Mars One has said it'll select an international group of 40 astronauts by the end of this year, and four of them — two men and two women (we're guessing for reproductive purposes, and our television entertainment) — are set to take off for Mars as soon as September 2022, landing in April 2023.

The people who go are accepting to never come back, though. Ever.

"It's likely that there will be a crematorium," said CEO Bas Lansdorp. "It's up to the people on Mars to decide what to do with their dead."

Interested? You can apply by clicking here. (Don't.)