'If I Die On Mars' - Meet The People Volunteering For A One Way Trip To The Red Planet

The Mars One mission wants to establish a human colony on Mars. And they want to begin that by sending humans to the red planet by 2025.

So awhile back they asked for volunteers who wouldn't mind making a one way trip to Mars—pioneers of interplanetary space travel who would never return home to earth to see their friends or family again.

Sounds like fun, right? Er, no.

But just who would want to volunteer to leave behind the relative paradise of earth for the cold hostility of the unknown and death on a planet over 30 million miles away?

In their short documentary If I Die on Mars The Guardian spoke with three people who are finalists in the Mars One project and asked why the hell they want to do it.

From The Guardian:

Three volunteers are on the shortlist to be among four people on the Mars One programme, the first manned space flight to Mars – a one-way trip that's effectively a suicide mission. A physics student in the UK, a young doctor from Mozambique and an Iraqi-American woman, all happy to sacrifice their futures for a place in history. Why do they want to leave Earth, and who are they leaving behind? As the list of potential Mars explorers is whittled down further on 16 February, meet those competing to be the first to land on the Red Planet.