"They" promise us a human on an Asteroid around 2020, and a human on Mars "in the 2030s" (meaning anything between 2030 and 2040!). I hope to live long enough to see that happen.
/Admin
Even if you will live long enough (say, until 2060), you will not see a manned Mars mission. Remember my words! Just today morning I posted the following on another forum. Just ignore the stuff which doesn't belong, I am lazy to remove it.
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Forget Mars. A 3D printer is the last thing they would need at this point. In order to get humans to Mars, an entirely new propulsion technology must be invented. I don't even understand how this didn't come out when Bush mentioned a goal by 2050 to get to Mars. Much as I am conservative, registered Republican, that was a totally unreasonable statement. Just think about it: it took an over 300 feet long Saturn V rocket to propel the (about) 4x3 meters capsule to its trip to the Moon. Since under optimal circumstances a one way trip to the Mars is about half a year, a much larger "whatever/capsule" would be required. But that is the small problem. The bigger problem are the "other stuff", such as oxygen, food, water and the list goes on. An even bigger problem: the Mars has a somewhat less gravity than Earth, but far bigger gravity than the Moon. Its atmosphere is about 1/1000th of Earth, thus the combination of larger gravity and less atmosphere would make the landing far, far more complicated than to the Moon and Earth. Continuing: Mars has no breathable atmosphere. It is one thing to walk around on the surface of the Moon in astronaut suits for a couple of hours, it is an entirely different thing to spend half a year to get there and stay there for obviously longer time periods. And here it gets more complicated. Where would the astronauts live? Some house? Whatever, wherever, that would have to be also transported there (I don't think a 3D printer could print a house
. Again, food, water, oxygen, whatever else. And the problems are far from over. Coming back would be the most difficult. Forget about the "mini-launch" as they did it from the Moon, because the gravity. Going back to Mars orbit would require far more energy and propulsion. It may even require some facilities, similar to the Cape. How would they get all the required stuff there and build such facility? Then some additional fuel (and everything else) to come back to Earth.
So, we either talking about an armada of spaceships going there, and/or a totally different propulsion technology which is able to carry everything to space and propel the spaceships toward Mars, with a much less traveling time than with the current existing technology.
Other unresolved issues, such as radiation, which seems to be okay on a short term, but spending say 1.5 years in space....well....at least highly questionable (never mind about other health issues).
Mankind, while knowing already that the likelihood of life on Mars is negligible, extremely unlikely to start developing such Mars mission. I won't live long enough to witness it one way or another, but my prediction is that there will be no human travel to Mars by 2050. Keep in mind, it is four decades away, just about the same amount of time elapsed between the last Moon landing and today, the last shuttle landing. Today we don't even have a Mercury or Gemini (never mind about Apollo) to travel to the ISS.
