[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

I think we could go now. We have the technology, so why not?

Well, I really don't think anyone is fighting to see who goes first anymore. When the Cold War died, the space race died with it. If the Cold War was still going on, I'll betcha we would have landed someone on Mars 8 years ago. The Soviet space program attempted two launches in 1988 to explore Mars and it's moon Phobos that met with disappointment, continuing a streak of bad luck that pretty much has plagued every Soviet or Russian Mars mission. So because of that also, I don't think we've really been that pressed to go. It's funny how after the launch of Sputnik, we went to the moon soon after. I guess our government now sees it as since we have no one to compete against, why go?

Because we don't have the technology. Not anywhere close. The moon is 240,000 miles away. If we wanted to go back to the moon, we probably could. Mars is 50,000,000 miles away. It's 208 times farther away than is the moon. The shortest time period possible to get from the earth to mars is 9 months, and that is if you time it exactly right at an opportunity that comes every 1.6 years. Here's a quote from a kids astronomy page about the difficulty of a mission to Mars.

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.

It's obviously a little outdated too since it's still saying we are making less than 10 shuttle launches a year. Yeah, much less now.