The thing about the Mars One project -- a private, mass-participation initiative to send a group of hardy colonists to die on Mars -- is that by most accounts, it's a long, long way from actually happening.
Regardless, the number of people who have agreed to take part in the selection process at least demonstrates we are ready to go, if called.
So what kinds of people would actually be willing to give up their lives on Earth and blast through space for 18 months, undertaking huge exposure to radiation and placing their existence in the hands of as-yet-uninvented life support systems, just to say they made it to another world?
Well, The Guardian has spoken to three of them - a British physics student, a doctor from Mozambique and an Iraqi-American woman. Here are their stories - read the full account by the filmmakers here.
Fortunately for their friends and families, they probably won’t have to say goodbye anytime soon.
In an analysis of the project, Olivier de Weck, an MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics said in 2014:
“We’re not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible,” de Weck says. “But we do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made.”