Scoring a spot aboard the first crewed vessel to Mars will require prospective astronauts to jump through a number of hoops, which include a two-year “experiment” to determine their suitability for such a mission.

Come to think of it, jumping through hoops would probably be far easier than travelling to Mars:

“The experiment would consist of placing a crew on the space station for say seven or eight months, then taking them from the station and landing them on the Moon and asking them to survive there for nine months to a year, with no further assistance other than what they have brought,” says Griffin. “After that, return them to the space station for another six or seven months and then back to Earth. All with no extra assistance - because that is what it will be like when we go to Mars,” Griffin continued. “Unless we can do that experiment successfully, the first crew to go to Mars will not come back.”

Pioneering stuff. Nothing like the shirt-sleeve comfort of space travel we are used to seeing in many science fiction movies.