If you’re having a bad day here on Earth, consider the alternative.

How about a bad day on Mars?

Applications are now open for people who want to be the first settlers on Mars.

It may sound like science fiction, but Mars One, the company offering the gig, swears they’ll have you there by 2023, which is only a decade away.

But there’s a catch.

Mars One has the technology to get you there, but the technology to get you home doesn’t exist.

It’s like that Eagles anthem, Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

So it’s a one-way ticket to the Red Planet.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to go to Mars; I’m just not sure I want to be stuck there. At first blush, it sounds romantic, but sometime around year 4, you might want to order in pizza or hit the clubs, and whaddaya know? No pizza parlours. No clubs.

Just more of that astronaut food that tastes like Tang and dog biscuits.

Therefore Mars One is looking for a special kind of person. Someone who is nuts enough to spend the rest of his or her life stuck in a climate-controlled hut the size of a porta-pottie but well-adjusted enough not to try to eat his or her fellow castaways.

If you’re that kind of person, Mars One is for you. All you need is to convince the Mars One people that you’re the best nutbar of all the nutbars applying for the nutbar job, plus you’ve got the $33 registration fee. Deadline was August 31, 2013.

Before you sign up, you should know that the average temperature on Mars is -55. That will give applicants from Siberia and Canada the inside track. If you’re from Novosibirsk or Winnipeg, it will feel just like home.

Other than thicker than normal heads or blood, applicants require no special skills, as they will spend the next seven years training and getting ready. So, as you’d expect, the gallery of geeks featured on the Mars One web site are all cut from the same cloth: basement-dwellers with bad facial hair. And that includes the women, with the clear exception of Ilona, 23, from Finland. You could almost imagine spending the next 63 years in a hermetically sealed bin with Ilona, who says she wants to devote herself to the good of mankind and enjoys the humour that comes from well-crafted subtlety.

Such as the prospect of being stuck on Mars with Jason, 24, from the US, who has an associate degree in welding and aspires to a bachelor’s degree in welding engineering, for the rest of her life.

Somehow I think all this is going to end in tears. Too bad that on Mars, no one can hear you cry.