Also I suspect this will be a disaster. Even if somehow they get enough funding to get this off the ground, I see governments shutting down the show pretty quick, as its total suicide for the contestants.
Even in the extreme best case, if they were to actually go ahead with it and land in a permanent base, the contestants would die of radiation after a few years at the most. Who wants to watch a reality show of people slowly dying of radiation poisoning.

That being said, A for effort, I love the idea to try to get people interested in colonization via a reality show, and I'd watch the shit out of it if they aired it.

Cynicism doesn't launch space ships.

Muscle wastage
Loss of bone density
Radiation on route
Radiation on the surface
Just one malfunction in life-support (temperature, pressure, gas mix) - and that's it
Contamination of the surface (all rovers are thoroughly sterilised so we don't pick up our own life signatures)

Can't see it happening with the current level of propulsion technology (which impose severe weight constraints)

Prediction: the show will show training and isolation tests for a few weeks until interest fizzles and the whole project will be forgotten.

That's not to say I wouldn't love to see it all happen, but just because you want to see it, doesn't mean it's technologically feasible. China may have the resources, but not sure if it has the interest.

Don't get me wrong I really want this to succeed. It's the camping in the air bubble bit that worries me.

It really does sound too good to be true... But making another movie about Mars (after the failures of Red Planet, Mission To Mars and John Carter) would require even more courage than actually going to Mars, so it's probably not a flick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Days_on_Mars

Even if this could happen safely, with very few health risks, who on this awesome planet EARTH would want to spend the rest of their lives on MARS? It might be cool for a few days, then I'd wanna go home. I don't wanna live in a box with nothing to do for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, this facility could become a completely inescapable, really really expensive galactic prison. I can see it now...

"You are hereby sentenced to life... ON MARS."

"NO! JUST KILL ME NOW, PLEASE!!!"

"Mars is a Harsh Mistress"

AKA Alien 3.

Just live in outback Australia. Looks about the same. Red rocks for miles in all directions. Exposure on the surface leads to rapid death. There's a reason why it's empty.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Speaking of Mars, the lastest issue of The New Yorker has a feature piece about Curiosity and some of the scientists who created her. If you're a NASAhead, you might already know most of what's in the article, but there's some interesting little factoids in there as well. The writer definitely captured just how cool the sky crane's engineering was:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013 … ntPage=all