If you’re thinking about moving somewhere with lots of wide open spaces, may we suggest Mars? A Dutch company says it will have a colony in place on the Red Planet by 2023.

Netherlands researcher Bas Lansdorp is heading up the project called Mars One, in which a communications satellite will arrive on the planet in 2016. Four years later, the life support units, supplies and rovers which will prepare the settlement for human occupation will be dispatched.

Finally, humans will embark on the seven-month journey to their new homes in 2023, and every two years thereafter, a new team will join the settlement. By 2033, the project organizers expect 20 people to be living and working on Mars.

It may sound like the plot of a sci-fi novel, but since it has the vocal support of Gerard ‘t Hooft, a Dutch theoretical physicist and winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics, it may be more real than previously thought possible.

But for the people who wind up going, it’s a one-way trip — the settlers will stay for the rest of their lives. And in a ‘Truman Show’-esque twist, the colony’s goings-on will be broadcast to those of us still on Earth.

Check out a video about the ambitious plan below.

More From Rock 108