Mars One—the private space project that plans to be the first to send humans to Mars and leave them there—officially opened its virtual doors to would-be Mars residents, per a press release and press conference Monday. Today is the first day anyone who has ever thought it might be neat to put on a helmet and see Earth from outside its atmosphere can submit an application to be considered for the first permanent human colony on Mars. The Mars One foundation reports it has received 10,000 messages of interest about the program prior to this point. We'll soon see how many of those translate to applications.

The Mars One project was started by Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch entrepreneur, with the goal of setting up a small human-inhabited outpost on Mars. The tentative schedule has supplies landing on the red planet in 2016 and the settlers in 2023.

Lansdorp has asserted many times that all of the technology necessary to accomplish the mission already exists. It's just a matter of coordinating a lot of sophisticated hardware, billions of dollars, cooperation between a few hundred people and companies. (Oh, and the whole trust thing from a few people who will leave Earth and never come back.)

Lansdorp in the past has brushed off many practical questions regarding the mission, and he continued to do so at the press conference. He and his team reiterated that the necessary technology has been developed, and Mars One will do none of the hardware building or planning itself.



Most of those considerations will be outsourced to companies that are better equipped and situated. For instance, the Falcon Heavy, built by SpaceX, is the vehicle they expect to transport humans to Mars. The life support unit will be built by Paragon Space Development, Mars One's closest partner.

"Reality TV" has been the phrase haunting the project since Lansdorp brought the idea to light. His team, which includes physics Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft and medical director Norbert Kraft, plans to sustain funding for the mission by televising portions of its progress.

Lansdorp has, at times, insisted that Mars One is a space mission first. "This is not ‘Big Brother Goes to Mars.’ It’s important this is treated as a very serious project," he told the New York Times in March. Yet, at the official announcement of the application period, Lansdorp placed heavy emphasis on the "stories" that the mission would tell and how it would capture the attention of the entire Internet-connected world.

At the start of the press conference, Lansdorp repeatedly compared the Mars One mission to the Olympic Games. The 2012 Olympics in London had revenues of $4 billion for an event that lasted only three weeks, Lansdorp said, "just because the world was watching." Lansdorp stated that by the time the mission launches the settlers to Mars in 2023, four billion people will be connected to the Internet. Thus, a massive audience is equipped to watch the journey and see how the colonizers' time on Mars unfolds.

"Mars One will enable people to watch and be involved... as we train them and of course as they settle the next planet... these will be stories of heroes doing remarkable things, just like the Olympic Games... the stories we tell around it will make it financially possible," said Lansdorp.



The application process, too, seems like it will be a way for the project to raise money. To simply look at the application, much less fill it out, interested parties must pay around $38 (the price scales according to the GDP of the country where the applicant resides). From there, users can file a private or public application that requests a short video, written self-introduction, and description of interests.

Lansdorp also indicated that he plans to get viewers attached to and rooting for their favorite astronauts. Already, visitors to the Mars One site can rate public applicants on a scale of one to five stars. "This is a human mission, a mission where humans are selected by the audience... They are our TV friends," Lansdorp said. "We'll see the group dynamics, the things that go wrong, and that's what makes it interesting... that's why it will stay interesting for a very long time."

Those who apply now are a decade out from actually reaching Mars, and that's barring any setbacks. Once there, Lansdorp and his cohorts stated that the colonizers would be more or less free to handle themselves. "They can do whatever they want, what they think is best for themselves," said Kraft. "If they don't like a camera, they can put a piece of duct tape over it," Lansdorp said. Kraft further asserted that there would be little the team on Earth could do to force any of the Mars team to do anything (they're just not thinking cruelly—three words: remote oxygen shutoff).

With regard to how the project would progress beyond the first two human shipments (the second arriving in 2025), Lansdorp was glib. "Where is this going? Of course we don't know," he said. With regard to how the project will progress, Lansdorp said that "There might be delays, there might be cost overruns, there might even be failures." Yikes.

"It can be done," he ultimately insisted. As of April 2013, Mars One has sourced $72,220 in donations.