Is there life on Mars? Nope, just manic depressives in a Rotastak.

Space exploration has been the enduring dream of mankind for at least, well, since Star Trek. Columbus discovered America (sort of), Neil Armstrong visited a film studio (allegedly), James Cameron went into an ocean trench (definitely). That's right. Decade by decade, humankind's discoveries and exploits have got exponentially more lame. And now the crowning cat shit on the urine-saturated sofa: Under the guiding hand of the Mars One project, humans will establish a branch of Center Parcs on Mars.

Let's take a holiday to the Great Outdoors...
and then just stay indoors...which looks like the
outdoors somewhere else...for some reason.

Actually that's not quite fair. Center Parcs has much better facilities than the Mars settlement will have. There will be no water slides, very little in the way of karaoke and  hardly any vending machine to vandalise at all. Instead the lucky volunteers will be swept away on literally the trip of a lifetime 40 million miles away to a small inflatable hamster cage on a barren rusted planet UNTIL THEY DIE. At least Center Parcs has laserquest.

Of course it's easy to be cynical about the venture. It's only because Science Fiction has taught us to expect so much. It's 2013 already. Where are the interstellar star ships and the robots and the huge breasted alien women...oh....and the other aliens? How are we to be expected to conquer the galaxy when we can only muster the technology to propel a tin can one-way across a minuscule corridor in space for the world's worst camping trip? The ambition is large. The means are feeble.This is the equivalent of Christopher Columbus hopping into the Atlantic Ocean with a rubber ring, crossed fingers and a packed lunch.

The only reason we're going to Mars is that it's our only real option. There is nowhere else even remotely near or remotely feasible. And for what? To live in a collection of zorbs? If the idea is to flee a planet whose life support is failing for a life elswehere then there's no point if we're just going to another planet that gave up the ghost millions of years ago. Couldn't we do exactly the same thing on earth? Couldn't we just colonise a previously uninhabitable area of land using the same technology? Antarctica, say, or Grimsby.

Your opportunity to live in Mars' first trailer park.

It's even easier to be cynical when you look at the website. The whole recruitment process looks like it's for a new series of Coach Trip. Even the organisers only have letters of intent from private companies suggesting they can provide all the necessary equipment. It's like an spectacularly shaky pitch on Dragon's Den. According to a company spokesman, the project will be precariously funded by media interest in an ongoing TV series that will follow the new Mars colonists. Through the training and planning we will get to know hopes and dreams of the first handful of colonists...I'm sorry.  IS THIS ACTUALLY REAL? Rather than some International Space Federation effort to boldly go we have Big Brother on Mars, except this time we get to see them slowly grow old and insane as the mainframe starts calling them all Dave and encouraging them to do away with each other. The Truman Show has actually come to life, and somehow it's way more bleak and scary than the film version. Even more bleak and scary than Liar Liar. Charlie Brooker must be fuming. As the Dark Prince of chilling techno-dystopian tales, unfolding reality is starting to make Black Mirror look like Byker Grove.

Nonstick frying pans were a bi-product
of the moon landings, and potentially
the catalyst of the first Mars murder.

And what about these volunteers? What about these pale, glassy-eyed heroes of the final frontier? Thousands are expected to apply. Thousands feel so alienated from life on this planet that they would rather be doomed to eek out their days in a plastic bubble where oxygen supply depends on ratings than spend another day on their lush, magnificent home-world. So eager are they to escape their realities, they sign their lives away to a Dutch Media Firm who only have a tenuous grasp of photoshop.  What does that say about these new space pioneers? The company behind the venture says that: "Mars exploration offers an opportunity to celebrate the power of a united humanity" but does it really just establish a really expensive and really remote treehouse for angry loners? My flatmate is actually thinking about applying. He is the same flatmate who used wire wool on my non-stick frying pan. Confined spaces, no leaving the tiny life support area you depend upon, the same people having to put up with the same prattle day in day out. He better beware. In space, no one can hear you scream...unless they finally install that waterslide.