So, are you looking for a little travel? Some adventure, maybe?
Want to get away from the nagging mother-in-law?
Do you think you have the "right stuff" to make it as an astronaut?
The Netherlands-based non-profit Mars One is now accepting applications for volunteers ready and willing to go to Mars.
You don't even need an advanced engineering degree, NASA training or fluency in Klingon to be considered, either. There is no age limit, and all applicants need is to show their resilience, adaptability, curiosity and intelligence. They've also got to be patient, too, because the mission only gets underway in about 10 years' time.
There's also a $38 fee to apply, but they've got to raise the estimated $6 billion to get the project off the ground somehow, I guess.
Mars One plans to build a human settlement on the red planet, with four astronauts (two men and two women) heading up first, followed regularly by more four-person flights. The group wants to launch a supply mission that will land on Mars as soon as October 2016. A "settlement rover" will land in 2018.
To help raise all the cash needed for the settlement, astronaut candidates will be screened through a reality show and website, with Mars One selling broadcast rights and advertising. Viewers and a panel of judges will vote potential Mars settlers off the show/project while they train and prepare for the mission.
I wonder if there will be a talent competition? (Jorge, the candidate from Brazil and frontrunner, has a PhD in astrophysics and is in the top 100 percentile for psychological resiliency... but let's see if he can juggle six kittens while humming the theme song to the Beverly Hillbillies).
Mars One plans to put its astronaut finalists through seven years of training and testing exercises that will expose them to potential situations they might face during the mission. The trainees will also have to spend time living in mock Mars colonies on Earth and communicating with a mock Mission Control via a six- to 20-minute time delay to simulate the lag between a signal being sent from Earth and its arrival on Mars.
That means no high-speed Internet, which would mean no online gaming... so I'll probably not be applying anytime soon.
But some 10,000 people have already submitted applications and by July 2015, Mars One plans to have selected its top 24 astronauts, grouped into crews of six.
Once the four initial Mars settlers are selected, they still have to spend some seven months aboard a cramped spacecraft together before landing on a barren, red ball of dirt with a carbon dioxide atmosphere. They'll have to endure the hardships and loneliness of being that far from Earth and on your own.
Oh, and one other thing... it's a permanent gig.
Mars One is a one-way ticket, and anyone who wants to go to Mars better really, really want to go, because they are never coming back.
Hey, maybe you can volunteer your mother-in-law?
For more information, go to https://apply.mars-one.com/.
