It's a God awful small affair..

A one-way ticket to mars doesn't sound, to me, like a very exciting opportunity, and definitely not one that I would volunteer for.  The planned mars expedition due to blast off in 2022 has already received 10,000 possible candidates.  The Mars station (notice I have elevated Mars to have a capital letter after some debate with myself if it was a proper noun or not) will be built by robots between now and 2022 with the lucky (?) 5 passengers arriving in 2023.  It seems that the stumbling block at the moment is money - that's a surprise - and by treating the selection process as a reality show they will raise the necessary cash of $6 billion for the first 2 people, then a bargain £4 billion fort 2 after that.  I wonder if they have factored in the price of fuel.  It strikes me that its a huge amount of money to be raised by TV advertising, and it's a Dutch company, so a limited population (as all populations are, actually) in a language that only Dutch and Afrikaans understand.  I can't help but think that the 'winners' will be the most obnoxious people that we want to send off to Mars.  When I say 'we' I mean those that have the time/money/inclination/character to pick up the phone and vote.  I can't see me being one of them - having little time/money/inclination and character.