• Question: when are we sending humans to mars? is it possible yet? could it be a futer home?

    Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Natasha Stephen

      Natasha Stephen answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      NASA has confirmed that it wants to have a human on Mars by 2035!

      It is possible for us to send a human to Mars now but we are not sure how well a human would cope with the whole experience. It would take around 2 years to get to Mars and back, which is twice as long as anyone has ever spent in Space over the course of their entire career, i.e. in 20 years of being an astronaut, the total time spent in space all together! We also don’t know how humans would psychologically deal with this separation from Earth and being so far away from home. A Russian team locked 10 men in a capsule for 18 months to see how they would cope and they were fine, but of course they were still on Earth so knew they could be rescued if necessary. The first astronauts to go to Mars won’t have that safety blanket.

      The technology available to us at the moment is also hugely expensive so a mission to Mars, which is much further than any other manned space mission, would be extraordinarily expensive! We’d also need to take a lot of food with us to survive that journey and things like water recycling in Space haven’t been perfected yet. Hopefully in the next few decades, all of this will improve so that manned space flight to other planets will be possible and yes, Mars is the first planned stop! 🙂

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      It is technologically not possible yet — the distance to Mars is vastly bigger than the distance to the moon, and thus far we have only sent people to the Moon. It takes 3 days to reach the Moon in a rocket, and about 6 months to go to Mars — it’s a completely different game!

      There are many technological challenges to overcome to be able to send somebody to Mars, and most importantly, to get them back safely. Radiation, lack of gravity, long duration of the mission (imagine, you have to bring with you all the water, air and food for at least 6 months… plus, how would you get back?!), and the challenge of keeping a crew of several astronauts mentally stable for such a long time, all squeezed together in a very small space.

      Scientifically, I’m not sure that human space exploration is worthwhile: for the money you spend, you get very little scientific return. That’s because sending human to space is much more expensive than sending unmanned missions. Both it is a great challenge, and I guess we should do it in a spirit of exploration and for the adventure of it.

      But I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon — my guess is not before 2050, and perhaps even 2080.

    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      As the others say, it might be a while before we get people to Mars, but it is an aim that people are working towards and will definitely happen eventually, very likely in your lifetime. There is a private group called Mars 1that want to try and get there by 2025, but I’m unsure if it will be successful, as they don’t really have much experience or backing!

      In terms of whether it could be a future home, it’s not particularly ideal. There’s not much of an atmosphere and most of that isn’t Oxygen, there’s no much water and it’s further from the Sun than Earth, so it’s colder too, especially without the atmosphere, which helps keep the Earth warm. It would be possible to live there, but only if we either bring a supply of Oxygen, water and food, or find ways to extract water and Oxygen from the rocks on Mars, and grow food inside buildings. I’m not sure how easy this would be! It’s definitely possible, but it wouldn’t be the greatest place to live!

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