When will humans land on Mars?

[Ags]

My family has a running bet on when hoomans will land on Mars. I am an optimist and an a proponent of a 2030 date, but what do you think?

[Franklin]

I don't think there is any reason for people to go to Mars. The robotic instruments they send seem to be doing a fabulous job and without the risks to human life or the extra expense.

Same goes for the lunar landings back in the late sixties. I think back then it was just a race to prove who was the most powerful nation. A bit silly really because again, robotic landers are more than capable of doing good science up there.

Looking at the present climate with private companies getting involved with "Space Tourism", if some one is willing to pay to go to the Moon or Mars, then someone else will be only to happy to arrange it for them. Crazy, if they ever do go back to the Moon or even Mars they would probably just build a McDonalds up there! 😃

[johninderby]

NASA will launch the first test flight of the Artemis  moon capsule early next year.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/10/22/nasa-targets-february-launch-for-artemis-1-moon-mission/

[Stu]

7 minutes ago, Franklin said:

I don't think there is any reason for people to go to Mars. The robotic instruments they send seem to be doing a fabulous job and without the risks to human life or the extra expense.

Same goes for the lunar landings back in the late sixties. I think back then it was just a race to prove who was the most powerful nation. A bit silly really because again, robotic landers are more than capable of doing good science up there.

Looking at the present climate with private companies getting involved with "Space Tourism", if some one is willing to pay to go to the Moon or Mars, then someone else will be only to happy to arrange it for them. Crazy, if they ever do go back to the Moon or even Mars they would probably just build a McDonalds up there! 😃

The reason Elon Musk gives is to make us a multi planetary species I believe. It seems to make sense to me, in the long run anyway to orotect again catastrophe on Earth (which seems increasingly likely!). There are plenty of challenges of course, and who knows how governance and law and order will be dealt with on Mars. Hope it’s not like the Wild West until things settle down!

[Stu]

I went for 2032 btw.

[HiveIndustries]

These are incredibly difficult to speculate because you're talking about political programs on the scale of decades. SLS for instance is toting engines from the old Space Shuttle (for now), was redesigned hardware from Constellation and still took decades to get off the ground (we hope).

If you truly want a good yard stick as to when we'll make it to Mars (America+ a few friends, China is another story) you should look at the latest Mars rover mission. Right now the plan is before any human goes to Mars we'll send a robotic mission to retrieve collected rock samples from Perseverance. While getting Martian soil home is obviously a top priority for NASA the real goal of this is kind of like a Gemini mission getting ready for Apollo. This mission will be the unmanned test of whether or not we can land a rocket that can achieve orbit from the Martian surface.

So if this hasn't happened yet you're still years away from getting humans there unless the plan has drastically changed though I'd have to think unmanned testing for orbital insertion from the surface is going to be a mission pre-req no matter what (at least I hope for the astronauts!).

I think China may make a play at a manned Mars orbiter, maybe even try and beat us, though their success in landing a rover can't be overlooked either. Right now they're still way, way behind but they have the one thing that has kept the west from getting there, solid, undeterred will. We could have been to mars decades ago if we had the will.

2035 is my bet. Hopefully China does some cool moon missions at the end of this decade that scares us into being first and we get a real race going.

 

 

[Franklin]

4 minutes ago, johninderby said:

NASA will launch the first test flight of the Artemis  moon capsule early next year.

Hopefully they will put Messrs, Branson, Bezos and Musk onboard and drop them off on the dark side of the Moon!😃

[johninderby]

7 minutes ago, Franklin said:

Hopefully they will put Messrs, Branson, Bezos and Musk onboard and drop them off on the dark side of the Moon!😃

Ah The Dark Side of The Moon 😁

[Franklin]

1 minute ago, johninderby said:

Ah The Dark Side of The Moon 😁

Best album ever made!

Do they still call them albums?

[johninderby]

Yup there is a growing demand for actual  records. Lots of people like good old fashioned vinyl. albums.

Edited October 24, 2021 by johninderby

[HiveIndustries]

1 minute ago, johninderby said:

Yup there is a growing demand for actual  records. Lots pf people like good old fashioned vinyl. albums.

I wish the paper boy would bring more.

[Franklin]

27 minutes ago, Stu said:

Hope it’s not like the Wild West until things settle down!

I thought Devon was lovely the last time I visited.🙂

[ItsmeMaw]

With the way problems for the governments seem to go on forever, I think it will be private companies who eventually decide on whether it's worth putting boots on Mars.

Maybe by '32, but I think that is being optimistic!

Doing it just to do it, is a lot different now that it was in the 60's and the race for the moon!

[HiveIndustries]

3 minutes ago, ItsmeMaw said:

With the way problems for the governments seem to go on forever, I think it will be private companies who eventually decide on whether it's worth putting boots on Mars.

Maybe by '32, but I think that is being optimistic!

Doing it just to do it, is a lot different now that it was in the 60's and the race for the moon!

Even private companies are patsies for governments in this scale of a mission.

SpaceX wouldn't be a fraction of where they are right now if NASA didn't see the Falcon 1 and then bestow them the keys to NASA's tech, unfettered.

At "best" this will be like Columbus. Spain gets the credit and we don't even know what country he's originally from.

[Ouroboros]

Sometime within the next 10 to 30 years is my guess. Whether humans should is another matter. I think there should be a very serious international debate about whether for the time being Mars should be left in pristine condition in order to minimise the risks of contamination by organisms originating on earth. For that reason alone I agree with the earlier post suggesting that we should stick with robotic exploration for the time being. 

[johninderby]

Irrelevant side note here but Columbus bought maps of the east coast of North America from fisherman in Bristol before setting off. They had been fishing mainly off the coast of Newfoundland for many years and the fishing vilage of Walker Newfoundland was founded in 1491. 

[HiveIndustries]

3 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Sometime within the next 10 to 30 years is my guess. Whether humans should is another matter. I think there should be a very serious international debate about whether for the time being Mars should be left in pristine condition in order to minimise the risks of contamination by organisms originating on earth. For that reason alone I agree with the earlier post suggesting that we should stick with robotic exploration for the time being. 

I get myself here and then when I get there I try and remind myself how extreme of a position this is. Should humans have never left Africa? Maybe as life we're pursuing the absolute core mission of it which is iterate, spread, iterate, spread, iterate, spread.

I think there's a spectrum, and that spectrum is landing on a fully formed plant with complex multi-cellular life and a barren, dead rock and where you start to consider contamination comes somewhere in between. I think we can safely bet that Mars is more the latter than the former but that's not saying I don't think it should be a consideration.

It's the fear of not knowing what we could be harming that's causes this anxiety but at the same time we need to make a decision and if we can conclude contamination is highly unlikely and the ramifications if it did occur wouldn't be altering life as we know it on earth, I don't know, I think it's an acceptable risk by the odds even if the unknown is legit scary.

[Nik271]

I voted for after 2038. There are huge challenges of a 3+ month long  flight carrying many tons of stuff under pressure and temperature we humans require.

Even current  lightweight robotic missions wait for an opposition to reach Mars with enough fuel for landing.

Simple calculations shows that for a return filght first we need to deposit a lot of material and fuel in orbit at Mars, then do a practice run before the real thing. I don't think there are enough oppositions between now and 2038 to make this possible: I have not seen yet a serious technical prosposal with costing and finance backing ready to go, so forget about even starting before the next two oppositions. Space X is not offering any really new technology to the picture, a fact which may disappoint some of Mr. Musk's fans out there. 

But I think eventually we will get to Mars and in fact should get there if we don't destroy our civilisation this century.  

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

2038+. Travelling to Mars is relatively 'easy'. Landing with squishy humans, surviving and returning less so, plus multiple unmanned logistics missions will be required before humans put their boots on the ground.

 

[HiveIndustries]

1 minute ago, Nik271 said:

I voted for after 2038. There are huge challenges of a 3+ month long  flight carrying many tons of stuff under pressure and temperature we humans require.

Even current  lightweight robotic missions wait for an opposition to reach Mars with enough fuel for landing.

Simple calculations shows that for a return filght first we need to deposit a lot of material and fuel in orbit at Mars, then do a practice run before the real thing. I don't think there are enough oppositions between now and 2038 to make this possible: I have not seen yet a serious technical prosposal with costing and finance backing ready to go, so forget about even starting before the next two oppositions. Space X is not offering any really new technology to the picture, a fact which may disappoint some of Mr. Musk's fans out there. 

But I think eventually we will get to Mars and in fact should get there if we don't destroy our civilisation this century.  

For the record, unless you put extremely exotic propulsion into play, starting at project Orion, you'll always been waiting for orbital windows.

There's absolutely no chance under any circumstances, under any conceived chemically propelled rocket that you'd ever try and just go to Mars "whenever."

Even if you could you'd be sacrificing literally 99% of your payload to do it.

[wulfrun]

Considering the plight of our current planet, I'd have to question our right to start interfering with another. Not to mention that if it doesn't happen very soon indeed, I wonder if the environmental cost to Earth would lead to its cancellation anyway.

[johninderby]

The technology needed to go to Mars and actually live there could help in creating the technology needed to help deal with climate change on earth so not going to Mars could be counter productive. 

Edited October 24, 2021 by johninderby

[DaveS]

2 hours ago, Franklin said:

I don't think there is any reason for people to go to Mars. The robotic instruments they send seem to be doing a fabulous job and without the risks to human life or the extra expense.

Same goes for the lunar landings back in the late sixties. I think back then it was just a race to prove who was the most powerful nation. A bit silly really because again, robotic landers are more than capable of doing good science up there.

Looking at the present climate with private companies getting involved with "Space Tourism", if some one is willing to pay to go to the Moon or Mars, then someone else will be only to happy to arrange it for them. Crazy, if they ever do go back to the Moon or even Mars they would probably just build a McDonalds up there! 😃

These sort of arguments always depress me, as take them back far enough and Acanthostega would never have bothered crawling out onto land.

[DaveS]

49 minutes ago, HiveIndustries said:

For the record, unless you put extremely exotic propulsion into play, starting at project Orion, you'll always been waiting for orbital windows.

There's absolutely no chance under any circumstances, under any conceived chemically propelled rocket that you'd ever try and just go to Mars "whenever."

Even if you could you'd be sacrificing literally 99% of your payload to do it.

Doesn't even have to be that exotic, we're not talking fusion, antimatter, let alone warp drives. The Nuclear Salt Water Rocket will do very nicely thank you.

[Ouroboros]

46 minutes ago, HiveIndustries said:

I get myself here and then when I get there I try and remind myself how extreme of a position this is. Should humans have never left Africa? Maybe as life we're pursuing the absolute core mission of it which is iterate, spread, iterate, spread, iterate, spread.

I think there's a spectrum, and that spectrum is landing on a fully formed plant with complex multi-cellular life and a barren, dead rock and where you start to consider contamination comes somewhere in between. I think we can safely bet that Mars is more the latter than the former but that's not saying I don't think it should be a consideration.

It's the fear of not knowing what we could be harming that's causes this anxiety but at the same time we need to make a decision and if we can conclude contamination is highly unlikely and the ramifications if it did occur wouldn't be altering life as we know it on earth, I don't know, I think it's an acceptable risk by the odds even if the unknown is legit scary.

I disagree. We now know that life is amazingly adaptable and is found in extraordinarily inhospitable environments on earth. So I think it’s almost a dead certainty that if humans go to Mars then organisms - be they bacteria or whatever - will contaminate the planet and will evolve to live there.  So, we’re faced with deciding how important is the scientific question of whether life has developed independently in (at least) two different places in our solar system? The presence of humans on Mars could very well muddy any future discoveries of life on Mars, especially if it’s similar (e.g. DNA or RNA based).   Personally I think the question is far more important than boosting national prestige or flattering the personal egos of the likes of  Elon Musk. 

It’s not as though I’m saying humans should never go there. I’m merely suggesting we should have a moratorium on human exploration of say up to a century or until an international committee deems it safe to go there because the important scientific questions on life have been answered way or the other.