With the end of global colonization firmly rooted in the 20th century, the Dutch have decided to get back in the game- by colonizing Mars. 

Mars One, an Amsterdam nonprofit, has announced plans to establish the first colony on the Red Planet by the year 2025. Transportation of the first four colonists would begin in 2023, with an estimated 20 settlers a decade later.

While the tickets are one-way, there have been no shortage of candidates. 200,000 people originally signed up on the Mars One website as potential colonists, and the pool has since been narrowed to 1000 hopefuls.

Mars One, which was founded in 2011 by entrepreneurs Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders, has claimed that the entire mission of transporting people and cargo to Mars can be completed with existing technologies. However, the company will need additional technologies to keep pioneers alive on the colony.

While Mars One envisions all food grown from local crops in massive greenhouses, the oxygen levels would soon become critically high. A new technology for excess oxygen removal in outer space would have to be developed first.

Another life support issue facing colonists is the lack of water. Despite the Mars Phoenix rover finding traces of ice on the planet back in 2008, there is still no way to extract water from the planet’s rocky red soil.

An MIT team led by professor Olivier de Weck and graduate student Sydney Do recently published a detailed study and analysis of the potential Mars One space colonization plan. Their findings revealed that while the nonprofit’s plan was feasible, it still had some gaping holes.

While Mars One claimed that it would only need six Falcon Heavy rockets to send up supplies before the settlers’ arrival, the MIT team found that “overly optimistic,” with the actual number of required rockets closer to 15. Furthermore, the cargo transportation alone would cost $4.5 billion, a higher number than the nonprofit had previously calculated. Spare parts resupply would also be a major factor in the colony’s cost, eventually using up over 60% of the cargo from Earth.

According to de Weck, “We’re not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible. But we do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made. We’re pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path.”