If you think you've got the right stuff to make a pioneering space voyage to Mars, fire up the video camera and tell Mars One officials why they should select you for the trip.

The Netherlands-based non-profit told Space.com recently that it is soliciting astronaut audition tapes as part of its selection process for a Mars mission targeted for 2023. Mars One, co-founded by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, aims to establish a permanent Mars colony, beginning with a four-person crew that would travel to the planet aboard a specialized Dragon spacecraft built by private space contractor SpaceX.

What's more, the audition process will be modeled after televised talent shows like American Idol. Space industry experts will whittle down the candidate list, but the final selection of the first four colonists to make the trip to Mars will come down to an audience vote following a "global reality television series," Lansdorp said, according to the site.

Mars One told Space.com it would begin accepting one-minute audition videos between now and July to kick off a two-year search for Mars colonists. Years before the crewed mission, the organization aims to send robot probes to Mars to scout colony location sites, with the first such mission planned to take place by 2016.

The foundation intends to have 24 astronauts in training by July 2015. Following the initial voyage to Mars in 2023, Mars One plans to send five more teams of four colonists to the planet every two years.

"We expect a million applications with one-minute videos, and hopefully some of those videos will go viral," Lansdorp, Mars One's CEO, told Space.com in London last week at a meeting of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), the site reported.

Mars One will charge a fee for video submissions to both "weed out folks who aren't serious about their candidacy" and raise money for the ambitious project, he added. Fees will vary for applicants based on country of originMars One will accept applications from all over the world, according to Space.comwith a maximum entry fee of $25.

The first colonization mission will cost $6 billion, according to Mars One. That will include the cost of developing "landing systems, habitats, a Mars Transit Vehicle (MTV), rovers, solar arrays, and other technologies associated with the colony" as well as the trip to the planet itself, Space.com reported. Mars One estimates that subsequent crewed voyages will cost $4 billion apiece, while each unmanned supply mission could cost $250 million.

Part of the way Mars One hopes to raise funds for the project is through "a global reality television series that will follow the colonization effort from astronaut selection to the first landing and the settlement's expansion."

Lansdorp and Mars One will hold a press conference in New York on April 22 to further reveal details about its recruitment process, the site said.

Training will be long and intense for the winning candidates. The four-person teams will "face seven years of training that will include spending three months at a time in a replica of the Mars colony," Space.com reported.

"We will give them all the most stressful situations," the site quoted Lansdorp as saying. The foundation expects some individuals to drop out of the running during training and plans to hold annual selections for replacements from 2015 onward.

But be warnedMars One is currently billing its ambitious colonization mission as a one-way trip to the Red Planet.

"[P]rospective colonists must be prepared to say goodbye to Earth foreverthere are no plans at this point to bring Mars One astronauts home," Space.com noted.

Applicants for the Mars One project must be 18 years old.

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