Given the chance, would you take a one-way trip to Mars?
The Mars One venture plans to give 24 people the chance to do just that in an effort to establish a permanent human colony on the red planet as early as 2024.
Seem far-fetched? Not for one Washington State man, Carl LeCompte, who is one of 100 people now on the short list for the Mars One mission project.
Next to him in the "Mars 100" is 27-year-old Mead McCormick, a University of Chicago graduate.
Mead and LeCompte were two of more than 200,000 people to apply for the Mars One mission, and will now wait to see if they make the final two dozen people on a one-way trip out of this world.
"I’ll be sad if I end up leaving everyone behind but I’m also excited,” LeCompte told NBC News. “It's a whole range of emotions."
The 28-year-old Microsoft developer isn't sure how he made the list of 100 finalists but suspects his passion was part of it.
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“I want to go there and actually build a home,” he said.
But that terrifies his mom, dad and sister who he’ll be leaving behind.
"They're proud of me but they're fairly adamant in not wanting me to go because to them, it's kind of like me dying, right?” He said. “Even if I don't actually die, they'll never see me again."
NASA missions have given us glimpses of what the planet would be like, and there have been questions about whether the Mars One mission will actually happen or if it's feasible or even possible for a crew to survive.
“Succeed or fail, hell, let's try something new," LeCompte said. "They always say Earth is the cradle of life, right? Maybe it's time to leave the cradle."
