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Purdue Grad Student Hoping For One-Way Ticket To Mars

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Purdue University graduate student was hoping to make it to the next round in a competition for a one-way trip to Mars.

A couple hundred thousand people applied for the Netherlands-based Mars One project, and now there are only about 660. By Monday, there will only be about 200 still in the running for the plan to establish a permanent human colony on Mars by 2025.

Max Fagin, a master's student in the aerospace engineering program at Purdue, was among the hundreds still hoping to make the cut.

"Honestly I'm feeling pretty confident," he said.

Fagin, 27, said he's been preparing for something like this for years.

"All that remains is to learn some of the necessary skills, which is why I'm in school," Fagin said.

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He compared colonizing Mars to the Pilgrims coming to America.

Fagin said he doesn't expect his friends and family will take it hard if he does end up going to Mars.

"Well, I don't see why. I mean after all, my friends and family are my friends and family. They know me. They know that I want this," he said.

A year ago, WBBM spoke with Aaron Hamm, of a Waukesha, Wisconsin, who was excited then about the possibility of seeing a sunrise on Mars.

Since then, however, he has lost some confidence in the Mars One organizers.

"It just makes me question their level of organization, and their level of competency in terms of actually being able to get it done," he said.

So Hamm has taken himself out of the running, and has decided to go back to school to study journalism.

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