A new, strangely morbid video profiles 3 people vying to visit Mars - and they seem completely unprepared for the trip

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mars

NASA'S Marshall Spaceflight Center

Photo of Mars taken in 1997.

Why do you want to die on Mars?

This is the most normal question in the series of totally bizarre topics that three Mars One volunteers are discussing in this latest video titled "If I die on Mars."

Mars One is a not-for-profit organization that, in 2012, announced a plan to launch a one-way manned mission to Mars that would maroon four humans on the red planet to live there and eventually die.

Anyone could volunteer to be a part of the mission, which has been widely criticized by experts. If everything goes according to plan, the mission would land a spacecraft carrying colonists on the red planet in 2025.

Right now, Mars One is whittling down its pool of volunteers who signed up for the mission, and The Guardian recently released a video interview from three of the 660 finalists.

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These interviews take an awkward, penetrating look into these people's lives and do nothing to explain why they should be going to Mars - other than their desire to get off this doomed planet, as one of them puts it.

Ryan from the UK

The first volunteer introduced in the video, which does not include last names, is a UK-based physics student named Ryan. Ryan has never had sex, has no desire to try it, and wonders if his father - who abandoned his family when he was an infant - cares about him. Some of the memorable quotes from Ryan are:
  • "I know 90 digits of Pi."
  • "I've never actually kissed anyone before."
  • "I think the most important thing to do in life is to leave a legacy....to try and find out if there's life on Mars, to inspire a new generation, to lead to the beginnings of the first civilization on another planet. That is my legacy."

Dina in the US

The second volunteer, Dina, is an Iraqi-American woman who has never felt love and believes she never will. She says that going to Mars will be no different than when she left her family in Iraq to go live in America. Dina says:
  • "I don't feel like I need a family to be able to survive and exist."
  • "Love is not something that I need."
  • "It's not a big problem for me not to have sex for...indefinitely."

Jeremias in Mozambique

Finally, a young doctor in Mozambique says that Earth is no longer a good place to live and the way he plans to see a world better than this one is to start from scratch - presumably he means on Mars. In the video, Jaramias said:
  • "If I die on Mars, that would be great."
  • "We have so many problems that I believe it's not possible to solve."
  • "I'm not afraid of death."

Check out the full video below:

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