Want to be an astronaut? Mars One wants to help you, but it might take a while.
Mars One hopes to send hundreds of people to the surface of Mars, to live on a colony it plans to set up by 2023, which will be paid for with corporate sponsorships and a Big Brother-like reality program about the lives of the colonists.
Mars One announced the plan in 2012 and began accepting would-be colonists on a mailing list, promising new info soon on how volunteers can become space-daring astronauts.
This week the first message was released to the potential colonists, along with tips on what they can do to prepare for the trip's upcoming application process, which will open later this year.
"Although it is not yet possible to apply, you can prepare yourself," the email says. "You will be asked to shoot a one minute video. We cannot yet reveal the specific questions we'd like you to answer, but you can practice with making a compelling video."
The email also includes two links to interviews with trip advisor Ray Kass, with talk of how the astronauts will be picked.
Mars One is only one of many recently announced initiatives to open up outer space to more than just the highly trained members of the world's various space agencies.
Designer of the future Elon Musk announced around the same time as Mars One his own intention to have at least 10,000 colonists living on Mars by 2030.
Since making that claim Musk has clarified it, saying that if he doesn't get humans to Mars in his lifetime, he would consider it his greatest failure.
But he probably won't have to worry too much about that, looking at the progress he's made so far. In the few years since founding SpaceX, Musk has helped design and produce several generations of rockets, earning a multi-billion dollar contract to carry supplies to the International Space Station. The latest of these missions just wrapped up well, as the SpaceX Dragon capsule dropped into the ocean last week.
SpaceX also seems on the verge of discovering the holy grail of rocketry, a reusable rocket, as seen in its recent Grasshopper rocket tests.
Those would definitely come in handy as we ferry mankind off our native blue rock to the red one next door.
