Calling wannabe astronauts

Are you stuck in a rut? Looking for a new experience that’s out of this world? The European Space Agency are looking for volunteers for a new simulated mission to Mars. If you are European, aged 25-50, of good health, have ‘high motivation’ and stand no more than 185cm tell, and have 520 days to spare, your country needs you. But not if you’re a smoker. And only if you can speak Russian.

ESA want to put a team of 6 people in a small fake spacecraft for 17 months, the amount of time they reckon you’d need to get to Mars and back. They want to do all sorts of psychological and physiological tests to see how the people manage, and say they will subject the volunteers to all the usual conditions of space travel. So they’ll experience the cramped living space, shortage of supplies, rubbish toilets and no privacy, without even the fun of a unique view of Earth and weightlessness to ease the misery.

There’ll be those who think that not televising the experiment is a wasted opportunity, but you can totally see why they don’t want to. You’d have to be a certain breed of person to want to lock yourself up in a tiny capsule for 17 months, but another person entirely to want to do that live on tv.

The BBC News article says that only 150 people have volunteered so far, so get in there quick. Bear in mind that you’ll only be paid $128 per day, but with no opportunity to spend any of it you’ll have quite the nest egg when you ‘land’.

IMAGE: NASA SKYLAB