A trip to Mars is a lifetime dream and excellent reality TV

Maggie Lieu is gunning for a one-way ticket off this planet.

The 24-year-old is in competition for a spot on Mars One,a proposedmission to Marssponsored by a Dutch non-profit that also has its own reality TV show.

The competition attracted 202,586 wannabeastronauts who applied from around the world. That's now been narrowed to only100 candidates, andLieu recently got word she's on theshort list.

Over the next decade, Lieu will join 99 competitors in trying toproveshe has what it takes to populate the Red Planet. She says there will be three aspects to this decade-long training program.

First there's the group training:Well be put into groups with people that we will potentially be spending the rest of our lives with and seeing how well we get on with them, Lieu says.

Candidates will also undergo technical training, wherethey'll learn the practical skills needed to man a colony. That's everything from medical and dental training to learning how to grow food and repair the outpost where the astronauts would live.

But the thing Lieu feels will be the most challenging will be the personal training. Mars One plans to simulate the experience of living on Mars here on earth with isolation simulation postsin the desert and the Arctic.

When we leave these simulation posts,well have to put on the full Mars suit, the gear, and well have to live with time delays when communicating with people on 'Earth,' she explains.

But even with those harsh realities,Lieu has been itching to leave the planet since she was a little kid. "When youre young and you say you want to be an astronaut, nobody really takes you very seriously," she says.But she's kept her eyes on space and is pursuinga Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Birmingham.

Lieuinsists the Mars One missionisnt as fantastical as it sounds. I think this is inevitably going to happen, she says.All the technology to get to Mars is there.

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A trip to Mars is a lifetime dream and excellent reality TV