Bas Lansdorp’s Mars colony is in the news. The first four settlers will be sent there by 2024. At least twenty more are to follow soon afterwards. All together, twenty-five teams of four will be deployed according to current plans. Lansdorp’s foundation has collected a huge number of applications for the venture, but it has ended up with seven-hundred-odd serious candidates willing and hopefully able to leave the earth forever. The trip back is not a part of the plan, that is. A series of unmanned cargo flights will leave in 2018 so as to establish the necessary infrastructure on Mars. The training for the mission will start soon and will last no less than eight grueling years. But who is behind this one-way mission? As it turns out, it is a subsidiary of the Dutch company that came up with “Big Brother” in 1997. The company has already snatched up all the broadcasting rights. The upcoming television show is expected to finance the entire venture. Colorful characters are thus required. Besides, they must yearn for immortality of sorts. But the travesty of Big Brother writ large is that it offers no hope for a lasting colony on Mars, let alone for the next step in the colonization of the solar system. It is nothing but entertainment, after all. And a fitting end to the dream of colonization of space.