The mission poses some interesting questions for a global community shifting uneasily amid geopolitical unrest and a disproportionate distribution of wealth and resources. What governance structure would you establish if you could design a human settlement from scratch? How would you organise labour and manage conflict when you can't vote someone off the planet? What if you are Muslim and a fatwa was issued (which it has) declaring your intended mission is tantamount to suicide and therefore against Islamic law - would you still go? The mission is conservatively estimated to cost $US6 billion ($6.6 billion). Co-founder and CEO of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp said in a 2012 TED talk, ''It's been my dream for 15 years to create a human mission to Mars, but I could never figure out how to finance it.'' Enter Paul Romer, inventor of Big Brother, who envisions Mars One as the ultimate media event, generating perpetual revenue to fund the project through broadcast rights. A short film (Mars One Way) profiling five of the shortlisted US candidates was recently released and makes compelling viewing. For the chosen ones, there are no prospects of C-grade celebrity spinoffs, cooking shows or Neighbours gigs. The featured applicants are not the high-fiving, exuberant and ''cultivated quirky'' personas of contemporary reality shows. In the artfully shot doco, they appear variously as loners, drifters and people who figure Life Out There may hold more meaning for them than on Earth.

Says one, ''I'm a floater. I'm like a turd in the toilet bowl of life. I don't really have any direction.'' Another young, introverted man who lacks ''any important reasons to be on Earth right now'' is filmed in a drab domestic setting amid a cold, grey streetscape with houses hemmed in behind cyclone fencing. ''I want to go to Mars because it will give me another purpose for living - a greater use of myself for the rest of humankind.'' What's challenging about watching these people is that they don't conform to our hypothetical ideals. We find it hard to believe that a meaningless life was the motivation for the great explorers of our history. Imagine Sir Edmund Hillary, tending his bees in New Zealand saying, ''Sure, I've got a few friends here and a girlfriend, but life's pretty aimless. I'm thinking Everest might change that.'' Most intriguing is a father of three in the film. He wears a T-shirt under his business shirt and jacket, hinting at the boy in the man who isn't yet prepared to give up on his childhood dream of exploring space; of a superhero waiting to bust out of his suit. In a society conditioned to put children first, his choice to leave his family is fascinating. Through tears he says, ''If my little boy came up to me and said, 'Dad don't go', that would probably change my mind.'' It's striking how many times a version of this is said by the applicants - of their mission being derailed by the simple act of someone they love asking them not to go. It's a portrait of subterranean discontent, isolation and a desperate longing for a life with meaning. Is being told ''don't go'' enough to create that?

These people, with all their vulnerabilities, represent the anti-heroes of our time. They are Walter White before his cancer diagnosis. They are the unnamed, discontented white-collar protagonist in Fight Club. They disturb us, challenge us and expose the imperfections, frailties and longing of a generation that hasn't yet discovered its purpose. What constitutes a valid reason to leave this planet for good? Is it acceptable to leave your kids to pursue an individual dream? If the definition of suicide is making a one-way trip with no prospect of returning (as the fatwa would suggest), isn't travelling through the birth canal also a one-way mission to (eventual) death? They may not be going boldly, but Mars One is challenging us to think about life - not just on Mars - differently. It could well be a reality show worth watching. Diana Elliott is a freelance writer.