Round two: 100 vie for one-way trip to Mars

(CNN) - A job for life may sound pretty good nowadays - unless, perhaps, you can't ever go home.

Yet more than 200,000 people applied for just that, on a one-way mission to Mars, and 100 have made it to the next round.

The nonprofit foundation Mars One is one step closer to deciding on the final list of hopefuls to make a one-way trip to the red planet. The pool of 100 candidates include 50 men and 50 women.

Eventually 24 people will be chosen to make six crews of four. The group plans to send those crews every two years starting in 2024. Their goal is to set up a permanent colony on Mars. The group, which is based in the Netherlands, posted a movie-type trailer publicizing the mission online.

But who really wants a one-way ticket to Mars? A lot of people - in fact, more than 200,000 people worldwide submitted video applications, including scientists, academics and those just seeking an adventure. Among the top 100 candidates is 29-year-old Josh Richards, an engineer and stand-up comedian from Australia.

"I want to commit my life to making the colonization of Mars a reality," Josh Richards said.

"Humanity's greatest strength is to dream of a better world, to imagine a future and to inspire a generation to bring it to life," said Ryan MacDonald, a 21-year-old physics student at Oxford University in the UK.

And 42-year old high school teacher Joanne Hindle from Canada said: "I'm ready. Let's do it. Let's go to Mars."

Some are skeptical about the entire plan, and whether the group can raise the billions of dollars needed to fund it, especially since only about half of previous unmanned missions to Mars have succeeded.

What's more, a recent study by MIT found that even with current technology, if the group succeed in getting there, they would likely only survive 68 days. It's also about what's ethical.

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Round two: 100 vie for one-way trip to Mars