Mars: Will Humans Ever Travel There?

With a global economic slowdown and war in the middle east seemingly inevitable, it may seem rather fanciful to think about humans going to Mars. The current state of space travel technology doesn't make this thought experiment any easier.

Nonetheless, economies recover, wars end, and technology advances.

Do you think people will ever travel to Mars? If so, will it be an Apollo Project-style "flags and footprints" mission, or the first step to true colonization? Could permanent settlements be established there? Could a distinctive society develop on Mars, free from the political, economic, cultural, and material limitations of Earth? Could Mars be terraformed to sustain human life?

What do you think?

[image=http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/mars/mars4.gif]

 

yes, we will go to mars. and we will walk there a la apollo. and we will attempt to terraform it. they already have preliminary plans for all of the above. i think the terraforming will be a big controversy in about 50 years...like preserve it how it is or make it habitable. i'm sure by that time earth will be so dang polluted and horrible that most will want to terraform from sheer need to escape here. sad, but i feel that's what's in store for us.

Guaranteed, though, mars will definitely be on the agenda in the next couple decades. they've been working on the whole nuclear power thruster idea to get us there and they're trying to devise ways to avoid the solar blasts. we'll see. i think it will be sooner than later.

 

I think there's the possibility astronauts could go there sometime soon, but I don't think we'll have the technology for people to live there for a long time.

Anyone remember that movie... Red Planet I think.... they terraformed Mars and created evil carnivorous bugs or something?

 

I doubt it will happen. At one point, there was an optimistic target date of 2017, but I believe it's been pushed back indefinitely. The American public is no longer willing to "throw money away into space."

During the Cold War, moon landings and other projects were funded because they were a source of national pride and because some people seriously thought it would be feasible to set up a defense network in space. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the need for those things has dried up. At present, there is barely even funding for a limited number of launches for research.

 

I believe that humans will travel to Mars eventually---I would wager it could even be in my lifetime. It's not something unfeasible such as travelling at warp speed (sorry, had to interject star trek here), and we have already sent unmanned probes there.

I believe when the cost of space travel is no longer prohibitative, humans will travel to Mars en mass. It's no the technology which is preventing us from travelling/colonizing Mars, it's the economic reality.

We have many, more urgent priorities, and pouring billions of dollars into a small robot to walk across Mars' surface, however interesting, is not in the immediate agenda of the general public. But it was also expensive to send people into space, yet today, such an occurance has become so regular, we hardly notice it.

In fact, we have a manned space station orbiting Earth. I remember when I first read about the planned space station and thought it was impossible (back in 4th grade), too star trekish for me...but now, I don't bat an eye when reporters talk about the space station. And I can only see exploring Mars as a logical extension of our space program.

 

Well, I'm thinking of becoming an astronaut so I can go to Mars. I'm not sure how soon it will come, though.

If it doesn't come quickly enough, I'll have myself cryogenically frozen, and wake up 500 years to the future, when technology will (hopefully) be more Star Wars-esque.

 

Perhaps we already have...

 

The Human race needs to sort out some problems on this Planet, like world hunger and evil dictatorships before we reach where no Human has gone before.

Now what if we find life on Mars, would we poke our noses into it for exploration? Bring back the creatures to examine and dissect them in the interest of science? The Human race needs to be careful, we might anger a higher alien race...

 

Most people dont realize how long it would actually take to get there with our current propulsion technology. It took them a few days to get to the Moon, it will take them (cant remember exact figure) 8 months to get to Mars.. ands thats just one way. Can u imagine the size of a spacecraft that needs to hold that much air, food, supplies, etc. It would be enormous. We wouldnt even be able to get it off the ground - it would have to be constructed in space. And look how long it's taking them to construct the International Space Station.

Once you are there, u arent gonna stay for just a few hours (like the Lunar missions)... not much point after traveling for 8 months. So lets say 8 months there, 8 months back and at least several weeks there. We are talking about a mission that will last more than 1.6 years. We havent even figured out how to live in zero gravity for that amout of time.

And ofcourse theres the money issue. Interest in space exploration in the generel public has been decreasing steadily since our last trip to the moon.

Until we discover/create new technologies to get us there alot faster or possibly some sort of "crio" sleep and we find a budget for this thing, we arent going anywhere.

My personal estimation is from 2040-2100, no earlier. And that's if we dont destroy ourselves first. I know this may sound pesemistic but I prefer to call it realistic.

 

Yes....because....


MARS NEEDS WOMEN!

 

Just out of curiosity and for showing that we didn't stop with the moon, humankind will definetely go to Mars... I just don't know when...

 

Will humans EVER travel there? Of course we will. The problem as mentioned above is one of travel time.

Nasa has had a tentative window of 2017 to 2021 for quite some time. Sometimes they are optomistic about it and sometimes they say it doesn't look like it will happen.

These private launch companies are far from a Mars mission, they have not even achieved orbital travel, although I think that will change within the decade. What these private companies need to do is get heavily into satelite launch and recovery.
Roton is out of business but when they were in developement they were offered 900 million just from one company.

And there in lies the ideal, you have heard it before, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."
Nasa will eventually go. A private company may or may not beat them to it depending on if they can make enough money to afford a trip to Mars at NON-GOVERNMENT costs.

Most private corps for the time being are concerned with orbiatl travel and many would like to set up trips to the Moon.
And Moon recourses are not easy to get at either. Its number one commodity is the helium3 in the soil, getting a vehicle there, mining the regolith(I think H3 is like 1part per million), and getting it back is expensive even at off the shelf developement costs. Still, a ton of H3 will get you over a billion dollars in todays market.

I really think Nasa wil beat any private corp unless some person with a few hundred million wants to invest in a rocket company to kick the whole thing in the pants. The problem is convincing such an investor that the returns will be good.

I'm rambling.
Yes we will go, I think before mid century.

 

At this rate, no, humans will never travel to Mars

If we continue the way we are going (Slavery, warmongering, oceanic depletion, denuding the world of forests, LOTR...) We wont even be around long enough to develop the technology to go to mars.

 

It's sad that humans will take so long to develop the tech to go to Mars.

And that's all I have to say about that.

 

Actually the tech exists right now to go to Mars. And we know more about Mars that we did about the Moon during the Apollo program.

The probelm is one of cost and time. Robert Zubrin has devised the cheapest way for NASA to go, some 40 billion for planning and developement and something like 4 or 5 billion a year to KEEP going. Even if there were a cost over run, the 100 billion that the space station is going to cost could have been put to the Zubrin plan. Here is a link:
MarsSociety

Anyway, no one wants to take 6 months or more to get there, and no one wants to spend 40 billion dollars, so for now, despite the ongoing research and developement by Zubrin and gang, its going to be awhile.

But the point is we could go right now if we really wanted to and didn't have to pay for a space station we don't need.

 

Part of the problem with Zubrin's ideas is, well, Zubrin himself. He's extremely rude and belligerent in person when asked about the details and is not a good marketer for his ideas.

One thing we've learned from MIR and space shuttle missions is that the human body atrophies more than they expected even with lots of time devoted to exercise. In that way, I think it'll be more difficult than we thought to go to Mars. The technology doesn't quite exist physically, in that we no longer have rockets powerful enough to take large payloads out of near-Earth orbit. But otherwise the tech-part isn't the issue. We could easily wipe the dust off the old Saturn V plans. Funding is the largest problem, but I think they'll really have to learn more about the physiological issues, too, especially the bonemass-loss.

Personally, I'd be the first to sign up if they announced the mission.

 

MARS NEEDS WOMEN!

I get this. I do. Wasn't it a former US President who said this?

Funnier though, the techno group M/A/R/R/S did a song called "Pump Up the Volume" years ago... In the full version, they used a sample of that quote... and of course it took on a whole new meaning because of the name of the group.

But seriously... the next feasible launch window for a manned mission to Mars is 2018-2021, because Earth and Mars will be in closest proximity to one another at that time.

The only problem is arguing a commercial value to this mission. Yes, unfortunately, with the cold war gone, and most of our enemies in this day being nowhere as formidable or global a threat as the former USSR (If they ever actually were our enemy... that is clandestine matter...), the primary motivating factors for funding are now either commercial or purely exploratory in nature.

Either we have to grow a brain and decide to put money into endeavors that expand our intellectual horizons... or we have to figure out why Mars is commercially valuable in the short term (short term being within one lifetime... In reality, few CEOs are going to allocate expenditures to something that doesn't benefit themselves in some fashion....).

The good news is that it won't be as expensive or time consuming as we once thought... thanks to newer technologies such as Ion Pulse Thrust engines... we will make the trip in less than 120 days and at significantly reduced cost... not having to worry about the payload and expense of solid or liquid fuel used in normal rocket combustion propulsion.

 

I'm gonna give a link to a Spacedaily article on Mars exploration. Its actually a six parter, I'm at work so I read the first page.
Two things to note here, Bush dumped a couple of probe expenditures that were over a billion, and they are still talking probes well into the decade.
I should say three things to note. Some of the probe lander ideas are searches for life. If....IF (Notice big IF) some micro-bio-fossil life were found, there might not be a super eruption of Mars exploration, but I would assume humans would not be far behind after such a discovery.

Anyway here is the link:

Spacedaily

Enjoy.

 

shouldn't we try to get to the moon first ?

 

mars is earths future, definately. i'm sure that i will see people land on mars in my lifetime, but colonies will be a ways off i think.

 

Yes we will get there, and we don't need to be perfect before we venture out. There's no such thing as "getting it right". We'll always be flawed, but that shouldn't stop exploration and pure research. Indeed the knowledge gained from Mars might help us get closer to "getting it right".

Terraforming will take a long time but it's actually not that expensive. All you need is release CFC's etc and then travel there to plant some high oxygen yielding plants (and a good watering system), and that's about it. It's all about getting the ice to melt. Once you've got that you've got CO2 and H20. All you need.

 

Thanks for the insightful posts thus far, folks!

Here are a few thoughts:

I don't believe that the trip to Mars will be made with refined Apollo-era technology. I believe that advances in engineered materials, nanotechnology, and so forth will result in a spacecraft that is radically different from anything we have today. In addition, I think the procedure used in Ben Bova's novel MARS in which two spacecraft are tethered together and spun to create a sort of "centrifugal gravity" on both vehicles will be employed.

I think that automated machines will be dispatched to Mars to construct a pressurized human habitation there well before any manned ship leaves Earth orbit. This will allow the crew to immediately disembark from their ships and enter an existing base on the red planet.

The fact that Mars has only about 40% of Earth-normal gravity may be problematic for long-term habitation or genuine colonization. The effect of this low-gravity on human gestation will also be an issue.

I don't believe that there will be a national or multi-national effort to put people on Mars. I think that when the technology allows for relatively inexpensive, safe, and routine access to space, a private group of scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and adventurers will be the ones who send humans to Mars. Also, don't bet on the launch site being a "major" nation like the United States. Government restrictions, opposition from political groups, and other factors may make what we today call a third-world country, or even a floating platform in international waters, a more practical launch site.

 

I think that one day when all of these conflicts are at an all-time low we wil finally have the time to go to Mars.

 

Again, the issue is not the time but rather the money. As has been pointed out by many people much smarter than I am, the end of science will probably not be an intellectual end which comes about because humanity isn't smart enough to figure out anything new but rather a funding end, in which everything we need to further scientific knowledges simply becomes so expensive that governments are no longer willing to fund it. Some of the most expensive branches of science, most notably astronomy and astrophysics, are already beginning to feel the crunch here.

 

With all due respect to the question title of this page...

Who cares?