You may remember the effort called Mars One: “Mars One was a small private Dutch organization that received money from investors by claiming it would use it to land the first humans on Mars and leave them there to establish a permanent human colony.”
A bold idea, to put a colony on Mars funded as a “reality show”. Started in 2012 it was all over by 2019. The project attracted many dreamers, but not so many dollars. It also attracted significant criticism to the extreme that it boarded on derision for the Mars One vision being so far from reality as to be a scam.
In fact, sitting around thinking about what it would be like for these colonists is what provided the inspiration to write this whole business here.
I recently stumbled across this 2015 article from National Geographic discussing an approach to taking people to Mars and bringing them back. It includes a short video interviewing four regular Earthlings hoping to get the chance to go to Mars and never come back. I get the urge to go, but anyone seriously considering this should lock themselves in their bedroom with three strangers for a week before deciding to climb into the space capsule.
Mars One still maintains a one-page web site and an email address.