Yes, it's worth spending the billions of dollars needed to go. Do you even know what a dry river bed could mean? This is proof that Mars once had a warm, wet climate, suitable for the origin of life. I've already said that it can get up to the mid 60s there. Life could have been possible in Mars' early years, because in its youth the planet's carbon dioxide atmosphere was much thicker, endowing it with a very strong greenhouse effect. And so what if there isn't any present day life. What about fossils? Wherever life has died out, it will leave fossils. We need people there to look.

Just like you have to wait for Earth and Mars to be in the proper postion before you head to Mars, you also have to make sure that they are in the proper position before you head home. That means you will have to spend 3-4 months at Mars before you can begin your return trip. All in all, your trip to Mars would take about 21 months: 9 months to get there, 3 months there, and 9 months to get back. With our current rocket technology, there is no way around this. The long duration of the trip has several implications.
First, you have to bring enough food, water, clothes, and medical supplies for the crew in addition to all the scientific instruments you will want to take. You also have to bring all that fuel! In addition, if you are in space for nine months, you will need a lot of shielding to protect you from the radiation of the Sun. Water, and cement make good shielding but they are very heavy. All together, it is estimated that for a crew of six, you would need to have 3 million pounds of supplies! The Shuttle can lift about 50,000 pounds into space, so it would take 60 shuttle launches to get all your supplies into space. In the history of the Shuttle, there have only been about 90 launches, and there are less than ten launches per year... So with the shuttle, it would take six years just to get the supplies into space. For this reason, you would probably need to develop a launch system that could lift more than 50,000 pounds into space. Even with a better launch vehicle, it is unlikely that you could launch the Mars mission all at once. You will have to launch it in several pieces and assemble them in orbit.

This kiddy cut and paste was so cute.:p Actually, if we do the research we could use the resources on Mars cutting cost on some of the supplies.

Why do I feel like an underpaid worker at a zoo?

"I made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". - Han Solo

Actually, the human body has become accustomed, through centuries of acclimation, to a 24-hour clock. While there are also other related issues (such as the effects of sunlight on production of serotonin, for example), there's literally no good reason to keep time in "Mars time" for a basic exploration. It's likely more useful to keep a 24-hour schedule to prevent a sort of hyper-jet lag (especially considering how much the body would wither with 9 months of zero gravity) - a watch would be very useful, much more so than calibrating time to an astronomical idea of a "Mars day."

I was thinking the same thing, the only thing a "Mars day" would tell you is when it was daylight or darkness. You can just look around to figure that one out. Staying on 24 hour time seems much more useful to me.

And I don't disagree that it's possible to at some point go, but we can't do it now. Even if you could theoretically get to Mars, a capsule can't carry enough food for a trip of over a year (5 months there, 5 months back, however many months there to wait for the planets to get aligned correctly for the return trip. Let alone anything else you would need. Nasa's goal is to have the new capsule-based orbiter (looks like a bigger Apollo capsule) ready by 2012 or 2013, able to return to the Moon by 2020, and think the capsule would be suitable for Mars travel at some undefined point in the future after that if we can figure out other details. It isn't something we can do now though. Sure we have the technology to blast some shit to Mars, clearly, we've been doing it for a good while. We don't have the technology to keep people alive on that trip though.

can't carry enough food? why not?

You forget we have a space station orbiting overhead that's doing just that...testing out how long we can last up there...remember?

You are getting a few things confused...the new Ares craft is designed for lunar travel not to Mars...when we get ready to go to Mars there are plans on using a larger type craft to do the job...now come on...you won't send a speedboat to do the job of a cruise ship now will you?

Think....

FTW!! lmfao sooo true. That's why you shouldn't even bother responding.

Holy crap, it took me forever, but I *just* got this. LOLOLOLOL. :p

No... Ares isn't designed to go anywhere. It also isn't a craft. It's the rocket stage for the Constellation project. Ares I is the light lifter, Ares V is the heavy lifter. Orion is the orbiting module and Altair is the lunar lander. The plan is to modify the Orion/Altair pairing for a Mars mission later using information they get from the lunar missions. The target date to put humans on Mars is 2037 though, so it is very possible that the plan will change before then.

And you can't carry enough supplies right now. The ISS has enough power to stay in orbit, not to fly 50,000,000 miles. The Orion/Altair pairing just isn't big enough to hold everything yet and you can't power something the size of the ISS to Mars. I think the idea is to eventually boost up supply capsules that Orion can rendezvous with on the way, but that's still kind of a pie-in-the-sky idea at this point in time.

Hint: Lunar (luna) is Latin for...?

Either way, man will have to land on the moon again and establish a base there before they go to Mars...but I doubt seriously they are taking capsules..and part of that testing that you are referring to includes making something that can break from orbit and go to Mars...

So I agree and disagree with some of your points but we both can agree with all of our money going elsewhere **coff* fugging up Iraq and AIG speinding bailout money *coff* we can't afford Mars!

heh!

Ksig RC, this makes sense, but I was thinking that since the Martian year is 669 Martian days (or 686 Earth days) wouldn't we need to be on it's time? Once they arrived on Mars, since Earth and Mars are constantly moving, they would have to stay (more than likely) at least 550 days on the Martian surface before their return launch window opens up. I was just thinking since they would be there that long, the correct Martian time would be needed.

I agree with you about the effect of zero gravity, but what about the Soviet cosmonauts, many of whom have spent a lot of time in zero gravity on their Mir space station of over 6 months and some for over 18 months, nearly three times the duration of a mission to Mars. I was just thinking that in all cases, near total recovery of the musculature and immune system occurs after reentry and reconditioning to a one gravity environment on Earth. They could probably recover in a few days.

omg!!!! lol lol lol the bolded made me laugh SO hard. lol. :p:p

Though we have a long way to go financially, I still think after we are back on our feet and we get a president in office who isn't going to continue to waste money in Iraq, using money to look for other life would be worth the cost. We don't just have to look on Mars. Even though we're just starting out, it's still great progress in taking steps towards exploring other worlds around us. I understand that it's possible that our planet is the only Earth like planet that exist, but to me, that seems unlikely. Around 20% of the observed stars have huge hot planets orbiting them. Some are even larger than Jupiter. We're also starting to find smaller ones, some down to a few tens of Earth's mass. I think finding planets like Earth will be like looking into the past and future at the same time. I think it provides a glimpse a few million years in the future or even a few billion years into the past. Not only will it tell us about life on other planets, but I think it will also clarify some of the big unanswered questions about our own world.

Thats irrelevant, we wouldn't need to tell time on another planet to have a usable frame of reference. If the mission is drawn out in earth time then the astonauts could use earth time...