You have to be tough to be a good Martianaut. You have to tromp around in a hot space suit and 30-pound boots, with an air pack strapped to your back, while you explore strange rock formations or try to replace a frayed cable on a satellite dish. You have to decompress for 20 minutes before entering and leaving the metal cylinder where you sleep with half-a-dozen strangers of varying degrees of sociability.

There is no shortage of applicants, however. NASA and corporate space scientists vie with college students from Oregon to India for the opportunity to spend two weeks at a remote site near Hanskville, Utah, operated by the Mars Society.

Jamon Neilson ’99 ’01MS, a technician at Utah State's Space Dynamics Lab, was thrilled to be accepted. He has wanted to be an astronaut since age six, when he saw the Star Wars trilogy for the first time. "I've seen it 100 times since then." He already had two physics degrees listed on his resume, and he had just completed his second bachelor's at Utah State, in flight technology.

"I wasn't sure what to expect. That's partly why I went. I wanted to find out; I wanted to get a realistic sense of what an astronaut would go through, living on Mars."

The monotony of freeze-dried food was relieved by an occasional fresh salad of Russian and Chinese lettuce. Neilson was responsible for building a plant chamber like the one he built for the International Space Station under the supervision of Utah State and Russian scientists.

Water supplies were carefully rationed. Neilson's laptop linked him to the outside world. The crew had to turn off its cell phones. Real Martianauts won't use cell phones.

"I miss the crew," Neilson says, "even though, after about a week in the tin can, we started to get on each other's nerves."

A real manned mission to Mars would take at least three years. After two weeks in a simulated environment, Neilson recognizes the importance of practical necessities. "The astronauts must be able to live off the land and farm the resources. The most essential people will be a handyman and a farmer. You can have all the engineering skills in the world, but if you can’t fix the plumbing or grow enough food, you're in trouble."

In hopes of a manned mission happening in his lifetime, Neilson applied for NASA's astronaut corps. The rejection letter came as no surprise. "Thousands apply every year." He says he'll keep trying. He has the right degrees. He just needs more experience in an airplane cockpit. -Jane Koerner