Back in 2012 we told you about how a Dutchman was planning to film a reality show on Mars.

And now that they’ve started selecting people for the Mars One mission — 1058 people to be exact — the two Dutch candidates, Wim Dijkshoorn and Merlijn Vuurop, are telling us what’s going through their minds.

Merlijn explains that he’s drawn to the pioneering aspect of going to Mars and says it’s a huge step for humanity that he wants to be a part of. He’s also been at sea for three years with just his parents and is used to being alone. As for Wim, he feels it will be very a lonely existence for a long time, although more and more people will join the colony. He compares it to a monk’s life. And if he gets a girlfriend in the coming years, he’s ready to just break it off. He also thinks it’s better not to keep in contact with Earth and cut all ties with his family.

Never mind how scary this still seems to me every time I think about it, the Mars One people are currently saying that they don’t want the colonists to reproduce. I shudder to think how that could be enforced on people so far away. Besides the fact that the babies could have serious defects and that reproduction may not even work for all kinds of reasons, it could even go the other way around: that women will be baby-making machines to ensure the survival of the colony, but that’s just me freaking out.

(Links: www.nieuws.nl, www.space.com)

After Dutch reality show Big Brother went galactic, the Dutch have been producing and copying other countries’ reality shows like there’s no tomorrow. However, this next idea is way out there — literally.

The man behind the Mars One idea is Bas Lansdorp who claims that in 2023 we’ll finally put people on Mars. Not only that, but he’s thinking, why not have a reality show on the red planet as well, while we’re there. What scares me as I write this is that he has devised a way to get there, costing about 5 billion euro, but no way whatsoever of getting back. It’s a one-way journey. Getting back is currently too complicated to work out, which sounds like every movie I’ve seen featuring Mars, and they end badly.

Only four people can go at once, a trip that lasts seven months. “We’ve had hundreds of people who are willing to go and settle Mars, even families with children.”

And why would this actually work? There has been plans galore to settle Mars. You have to read his reasons for yourself, it scares me too. Why would anyone want to leave this planet and go somewhere where you couldn’t see your friends or travel as you would on Earth? It sounds like a prison to me.

When I watch any space movie, I actually get freaked out by people dying of asphyxiation or being thrown out a space lock. Of course the idea of going to Mars is cool, but is it worth dying for, I wonder.

And then there’s this old Dutch beer commercial that echoes a Mars landing as well.

(Links: www.bbc.co.uk, www.ed.nl)