It'll be like the truman show but on mars :)

If they put me in a ship with Jessica Alba they can send me to the very fucking Sun if they want to.

It's getting hot in here.

yeh this will happen

What happens when the ratings start to drop and it's cancelled by season 4? Do they leave them there to die as funding has run out?

I would assume that you'd need to keep billions of viewers watching for a very long time to fund a mission to Mars (I assume it's advertising driven).

When you consider that the total revenue of the TV advertising industry in the USA last year was just shy of $29Bn and a manned expedition to Mars is estimated to cost $20Bn+ (which they plan to send every two years), then they would need to attract ~33% of the total TV advertising revenue of the USA just to break even. It would have to be the most successful television show ever by a long way.

Unless of course I've got the wrong end of the stick and the reality TV show is only meant to partially fund it.

Yeah, partially funded.

I think they want to get a lot from corporate sponsorship.... London had  trouble getting enough for the Olympics, let's see how this will go...