jetprop wrote on Aug 7^th, 2012 at 2:31pm:


He was designed in the kitchen to be more precise 

I'm not really disappointed...not like I was in the 70s... sigh. 

It's an impressive machine, and its size and capability indicate what would be possible, and do-able, in the near future: send a series of cargo and robotic craft to Mars to prepare for the arrival of a human crew. Habitat, supplies, recon, the robots can do a lot even now, and robotic capability is growing exponentially. Makes a lot of sense to me, along with the idea of a sort of space ferry, basically a space station that is constantly looping between Earth and Mars.
Blasting the whole kit and kaboodle in one shot from the Earth's surface is one thing when you're going to the Moon; quite another going to Mars. And it would be pathetic to go to all that trouble just to say "looky, we're on Mars", plant a flag or two, and go home. Or how about spending nine months in a tin can with several other people, only to have to do all that grunt work to set up camp once you're on Mars? It would be useful to have the basic stuff waiting there, so the human crew can make better use of their time there studying the planet and working out the problems of living and working there, and sustaining a permanent settlement (even if crews rotate, rather than stay there permanently).
I imagine something like McMurdo Station- a remote base in a hostile environment, but pretty cushy compared to what the old dogsled explorers had to work with in the same area. It's not self-sustaining, but it's always occupied, and we have the ability to start building something like that off-planet right now.
I also think, speaking of the Moon, that we should do a lot more with that before sending people to Mars. Humans are still toddlers when it comes to space travel; we need more time in the sandbox (the Moon) before we go toddling off to the next county (Mars). All of the technology and logistics could be worked out between the Earth and Moon, and interplanetary missions could be much more easily and cheaply launched from the Moon, once there's a permanent settlement and some manufacturing capability.
The ISS is impressive, but imagine all that tech and hardware on the Moon, with people there all the time...!  More costly, but it could be done. And unlike an Earth-orbiting space station, a Moon base could feasibly extract oxygen and maybe even water from the Moon, along with raw materials for manufacturing. It also wouldn't need to be nudged back into its orbit on a regular basis... 

I think the future is potentially pretty bright, especially if the world stops looking only to government space programs to get it all done.
Many of the great, risky exploration missions in Earth history were conceived and funded by large governments, for their profit... but what made crossing great oceans and charting all those "undiscovered" lands so commonplace in just a couple hundred years was commerce, along with people seeking new lands where they could live as they chose. Scientists and adventurers have always played a role, too, but let's face it, it was commerce that connected the whole world together so quickly (on a world history time scale). The same effect is possible in outer space, using investor's money rather than tax money.

I'm pretty sure that we can do more than one scientific exploration at the same time. The world's scientific community doesn't stop when NASA takes off with another rocket...