It will be the next logical step. Hell, in the coming months you will be able to volunteer to go to Mars - It is a permanent arrangement though. You go up, you stay up (unless they one day figure out how to get you back down!)

It's important to know what's up there though. When they went to the Moon, they stayed there as long as their oxygen would allow them. On Mars, they need to make sure that it is feasible for life to be sustained.


The 2003 rovers discovered that water had most likely existed. It also gave hints about the atmosphere (certain rocks were too clean on the surface, meaning they had impacted recently). Water is very important - Not only do we need it to survive, we probably need it as fuel! Split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and you have the components to re-fuel the big orange tank on your antique Space Shuttle.


This new rover is making further plans to get people to the dead rock. Importantly, to understand the climate and geology. It will also analyse the radiation on the surface - The thing which is most likely to kill the astronauts is the solar flares and radiation up there. It just needs to be looked at. They'll find out what they're up against, and design a way to form shields.


In some respects, Mars is like Apollo 13. Up there they will have limited tools and will have to deal with what is around them - It is too expensive to take up masses of equipment. So they need to plan and see what the ground is like, what the sky is like and how humans can best survive out there.


Advancements will come, you can be sure of that. It's one thing to be the first person on Mars, but you don't want to be the last because it's deemed too dangerous. They're just sticking their toe in the water for now. Give it a couple of decades and we'll be up there! At the start of the next century, we'll probably be going there on holiday!

wahubna wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 4:24pm:


Its way too different than Apollo Mission
we went to the moon because its easy , the moon does have a very low gravity you literally could fly using a spray deodorant..

the moon its about 400.000 Km away from earth ,Mars sometimes its at 200 Millions Km of the earth and some times in opposition at 50 million Km from us(more less)

It would be already difficult to land on mars  on and a safe craft, No oceans ,No airports for landing or roads The air its thiner than the one on the earth ( to fly and airplane you would need a huge large wings ) ,Think to use something almost as big as the spaceshuttle tanks how to put it in mars surface? just to scape back of mars gravity to earth ..

  IMHO I think we still too far away to develop`that kind of engineer we need at least 50 more years

I think is beter to make a small device that allow us to see the rocks and sand of mars ,Not a robot

Xpand wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 6:36pm:


neither couple decades

Xpand wrote on Aug 6^th, 2012 at 7:06pm:


It was not in my life time, but was there not "there is no way" talk when Kennedy declared we would put a man on the moon? Not to brag about the US, but given are very diverse scientific and engineering backgrounds I feel we could do a manned mission to Mars in about the same time it took for the Apollo mission. From an engineering stand point, I firmly believe the US has the best collection of engineers. I think that kind of challenge is just the thing the US and American people need. Remember, the Apollo missions were much more than just scientific and engineering endevours just as the Mars mission should be.

Maybe I am taking it too deep, but I love a challenge. So I say bring it. The whole mantra of engineering is nothing is impossible, I really believe it and I know that NO problem is impossible to solve, it just comes down to this question: is it worth it? I think we all know the answer to that! 


Okay, that has decided it...tomorrow I will make a pitch to my boss about starting a WACO space program 

BIPLANES ON MARS!!!!

I'm probably going to get shouted down for this but anyway.

Why are you going on about a Manned Mars Landing?

Even if the States had the Technology I doubt they could afford it without adding Billions to their already massive debt.

Anyway I doubt it will be the States that land on Mars. I mean look at China.

Massive Population, Massive Income, Massive Industry. They are even planning a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier to be in service by 2020.

And even if it isn’t China that lands on Mars first whoever does will probably have Chinese funding or assistance.

First off, congratulations to all the hard working people all over the world who made the technology work and made this landing possible.

Personally, I'm glad robotic probes are taking the first steps in exploring our Solar System and the neighbors surrounding us, because frankly, I don't think the people of the Earth are either prepared enough or mature enough to make the venture into outer space, such as a journey to Mars.

I mean... we don't know how to live in peace with our neighbors, we're petty enough to continually make racial epithets about our President, we can't feed the needy people of the world, our Legislative Branch is more worried about looking good on the next sound byte than helping their constituents... the way we're acting right now, we don't DESERVE to be in outer space.

Maybe the Chinese need to push forth; to raise the bar, so to speak. Maybe that will be the clarion call for us to drop our whimsical notions of what's important... throw the TV remote out the window, lose the apathetic stance we've been touting all these years, and stop being so... arrogant.

Its a funny thing... ...

..but when silly old me reads stories about manned flights to other "Worlds", and starting a new life there, planting Carrots, breeding Sheep, planting trees and grass, emptying "Air" into the atmosphere with suitable pressure, and creating clouds, etc...

...and figuring out problems with Gravity, and that annoying Radiation malarkey...

...and Copulating in Space Suits...

.... I put my Grimm's Fairy Tale books back on the shelf, and retire to the sanity of my real World....

...down here...on Planet Earth...where we were designed... ...!

Paul.... ... ...!

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...