Traveling to Mars

[CptTrips]

I am not personally a big fan of the idea of a manned mission to Mars in the near future.  Maybe 50 years from now.

We can send tons of research robots for the same cost. 

For the cost of a one time quickie manned visit to Mars, we could instead pay for a full-time, permanent Moon facility that could house 100 scientists. 

$0.02.

[mechanic]

I'm not sure the impact would be so great once you factor in the costs needed to undertake such a plan. It would require an incredible amount of infrastructure that simply does not exist, nor could it exist in any short/medium term timeframe.

This is exactly the reason why humanity is doomed. We believe that humans need to pay other humans for humanity to achieve things. Invented currency, backboned on an illusory system of irreparable debt that doesn't really even exist, that apparently there is 'not enough of' for the human race to achieve certain goals.

There is no cost to going to Mars or out into space. Either we use our resources to get there or we don't. Cost doesn't exist.

[AKKuya]

I have been there. Not impressed.

You didn't coordinate with the Martian Bikini Team.

[Meatwad]

I traveled to Mars using Google Earth 

[whiteman]

This is exactly the reason why humanity is doomed. We believe that humans need to pay other humans for humanity to achieve things. Invented currency, backboned on an illusory system of irreparable debt that doesn't really even exist, that apparently there is 'not enough of' for the human race to achieve certain goals.

There is no cost to going to Mars or out into space. Either we use our resources to get there or we don't. Cost doesn't exist.

Exactly, I'll just sit here with a cold beverage and enjoy the extinction.

[Eagler]

There is no cost to going to Mars or out into space. Either we use our resources to get there or we don't. Cost doesn't exist.

Nothing is going to happen if it doesn't make a few very very rich

It never has

Eagler

[Chalenge]

I think the only real benefit on colonizing Mars is learning the extraterrestrial colony process. We can't really terraform Mars because the atmosphere will still slowly be carried away as it has been. Mining the asteroid belt would be a little easier with a station around Mars, but landing there will still lead to the expense of another launch. Mars would not even give the human much more survivability, because colonists will always depend on Earth supplies.

[Arlo]

Earth will become a penal colony

Become? Heh. 

[CptTrips]

This is exactly the reason why humanity is doomed.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[mikeWe9a]

I am not personally a big fan of the idea of a manned mission to Mars in the near future.  Maybe 50 years from now.

We can send tons of research robots for the same cost. 

For the cost of a one time quickie manned visit to Mars, we could instead pay for a full-time, permanent Moon facility that could house 100 scientists. 

$0.02.

A human presence on Mars might have the cost of "tons" of robots, but the results would be orders of magnitude greater in a shorter period of time.  For instance - a few years ago, a robot digging in the ground uncovered what appeared to be ice (likely water ice, but the probe could not determine this) an inch or two below the surface.  It took some pictures, and the next day the substance was gone, most likely sublimated.  The robot was not equipped to gather the sample nor analyze it if it had.  To this day we don't know exactly what it was that the probe found.  A human explorer would have picked up that ice, put it in a sample bag, and analyzed it at length later.   A human could have dug deeper using such advanced tools as a shovel, or even a stick (well, a pole - you aren't likely to find a stick laying around on the surface of Mars) to determine the extent of the deposit and gather more samples. 

Humans are infinitely more adaptable than robots for exploration of such an environment.  They can change their priorities based on observation, carry out a nearly infinite number of different tasks using only a rather simple set of tools, and make observations and conduct tests on one or more samples that no practical selection of robotic probes can, because the human can create and run tests in a fixed laboratory rather than running a set of prepared tests made years before a couple hundred million miles away.

Mike

[CptTrips]

A human presence on Mars might have the cost of "tons" of robots, but the results would be orders of magnitude greater in a shorter period of time.

Yeah, I get all that.  And that's fine, as far as it goes.  I wouldn't necessarily call it a publicity stunt. Though that kind of thing made more sense when we were competing with the USSR for hearts and minds and prestige.   But it will be unbelievably expensive and has possibly and unacceptably high risk of death for the explorers.  It's just too far for anything like our current technology.  Isn't it like a 2 year mission?  Given the kinds of safety testing and system redundancy we generally demand for our space program (especially after Challenger, etc.), there are just too many things that can go wrong that far away over that amount of time. When you are dealing with humans there is very low risk tolerance.

Believe me I want manned exploration and colonization of every rock in this system.  Except Europa.  Attempt no landing there...

In my opinion, if you really want to get serious about becoming a spacefaring civilization, you first concentrate on building the infrastructure to really drive things at scale.  For the same cost, I bet we could get a permanent, full size space station capable enough to essentially be a shipyard in orbit for building larger interstellar ships; with enough left over for a permanent manned moon base. 

Instead of one flashy Hail Mary mission to Mars, I'd rather set up permanent camp out in space instead of just visiting.  That's much more feasible to set up locally first in our orbital space and nearest planetoid.

Unless gov money is unlimited, then do both. 

But if Elon decides to spend his own cash to send himself, hey, rock on.