POLL: The Moon or Mars, Where to Go First?

[xfb109]

Mars is an extremely nasty place to go. Only the fact that it has lots of water and CO2 gives us a chance of survival there, but I don't think we can THRIVE there given our current technology. It's a harsher environment than the top of Mount Everest, and no mountaineer has ever decided to permanently settle there even with our current technology. Some people seem to think that we should set up a colony on Mars and pretty soon it'll be thriving - no, it will be very difficult to live there. If we get it wrong we'll end up with a dead colony.

The moon is much easier to resupply, communicate with, and most importantly EVACUATE. Think if epidemics break out - we have enough trouble with cruise ships having virus outbreaks, imagine if it happens on a Mars colony 40 light-minutes and 3 months' travel from earth.

We need a space transport infrastructure in place first beyond LEO, and the moon is an excellent place to develop that. The moon can be amazing for putting astronomical telescopes, doing low-g science research, provides a high vacuum environment for other science research, and near-unlimited solar energy at the poles, and as an added bonus the recently-discovered water!

In my opinion people are only advocating Mars direct for rather idealistic or egotistical reasons, and have no idea of the engineering challenges that lie ahead. If we get out of LEO, then Mars is not the only place to go: Titan, Europa and so many other objects will be within our capability to explore. We have to develop the ABILITY to do more things rather than just focusing on Mars.

 

[controltestguy]

Until we have the propulsion and radiation shielding problems licked, let's just go to the moon and get the experience of living 'off-world'. Once again, we, as human beings, are living and planning for the 'near-term'. Space travel must be considered in 'century' increments. Budgets must me 50 to 100 years planned out. Goals are fine if they are realistic. Let's face it, why do we want to spend nine months to a year getting to Mars, then have the mission end in possible failure when we can't mount a rescue mission because it would take a year to get there?

If we can reduce the the travel time to Mars to 2-3 months, then it would be worth going. Let's train first on the moon, get our act together. Open it up to private enterprise. At the same time fund the universities and research labs to develop the next generation of propulsion to replace chemical rockets.

Next, let's go out and capture an asteroid and place it in a high earth orbit with the ability to keep it there while we study methods for deflecting objects in orbit in the event we detect a possible collision.

So what if all this takes the next 30 years. In a hundred years, when we have the propulsion, shielding and a fleet of ships, we'll be zipping around the inner solar system on a routine basis.

Mars as a goal is fine but short-sighted. We should set our sights on Jupiter. I'm not saying go to Jupiter first. If we can make it to Jupiter and back, then Mars would have already been visited and the means to 'zip' around the solar system would be there and finally, the human race could start looking at expanding outward toward the stars.

We are a 'what can you do for me today' civilization. We don't live long enough to plan that far ahead. If our life-span was 150 years, then long-term planning would be a reality. So the answer is to convince the people who make these decisions to think 'long term'. That's probably the toughest assignment out of all.

I want to go to Mars as bad as anyone here. But I don't want to go if there's a good chance I won't return. I know if I don't come back, the human race may not make another attempt for 50-100 years. So let's develop the technology to at least give the flight crew an 80% chance of returning safely. That means giving them a ship(s) and the means to get there and back relatively fast. They can stay on the surface as long as they want if that's the plan. If the plan is to establish a base the first time out, then so be it.

I guess what I'm saying is: Let's not stretch the envelope to the point where the risks outweigh the rewards. There will always be risks in space travel and in the future people will lose their lives in space. All I'm saying is let's reduce those risks as much as possible. So what if we're not around to see it. I expected to be on Mars by 1985. But then again, thinking back, it would have a shoestring trip and probably would have failed the first time out. And what if it was a success. Would we have gone again? I think not. Did we go back to the moon?

The moon for now with moon-bases, mining, construction. Telescopes on the farside. Regular trips from LEO to the moon and back. A couple of tourists thrown in. Construction and testing of a hi-velocity vehicle with non-chemical propulsion. Make it boring and the the human race will set it's sights on bigger things.

I just thought I would rant a bit!

Regards,

CTG

 

[Gravity_Ray]

I would like to add another important fact to building a human colony on the Moon (even if there is water there).

It is not yet proven that a human being can function on very low gravity (which is what you will experience on the Moon) long term. The ISS has proven that a human being will not survive in micro gravity (say LEO) for very long even with exercise. There is way too much bone and muscle degeneration to survive long term (and how will you make an infant do exercises anyway if you are going to have a human colony). However, no work has been done on what level of gravity a human will need long term.

The Moon has 16% of Earth gravity. On a scale this is closer to LEO micro gravity than Earth gravity. Mars has 38% of Earth gravity. Although this figure is still low its twice the Moon. Due to no specific example, my gut tells me that 38% is probably close enough to have a viable human colony, but that 16% maybe too low.

Before we start building Moon or Mars colony's NASA should probably figure the amount of gravity we will need to be healthy.

 

[MeteorWayne]

A few people have survived 6 months to a year in microgravity with no long term ill effects, so it shouldn't be that much of a problem at 0.16g.

 

[kert]

The ultimate goal is of course Mars.

You state this as an axiom. Why ? Ultimate goal to what ?

If it is not an axiom, then it should be. The ultimate goal of mankind should be expanding our sphere of influence out from Earth to as many locations in our solar system as possible.
.but the only real place that for sure can support a human civilization is MARS. Hence the ultimate goal.

Your axiom is worded wrong. Yes, our expansion into solar system should be agreed on.

Your assertion that only Mars could support a human civilization is still completely unsubstantiated though. First, we dont know enough about other bodies in the solar system, so claiming "only" right now simply does not work.

Theres no reason why materials from asteroid belt couldnt support human civilization in free-flying bases, and there are potentially other places in solar system too.

 

[Gravity_Ray]

To Wayne

It is true that Krikalev did spend more than 2 years in space, and we have had stays of 215 days on the ISS, but when they come back they are a mess. All of the long term guys took months to get back to anything like normal and some of the astronauts say they still run into a wall when they turn a corner quickly a year after a long term stay.

Basically a year or two is max. But where does that leave a long term colony?

To Kert

Sorry if I worded it wrong, but there is a reason why I say Mars "ONLY". We are designed to work in 1 G. Anything less than that and we will actually physically change (so there still wont be any "humans" on a distant body even if we colonize a moon in the Jupiter system). Much lower than 1 G and I think we will not survive. All other bodies besides Mars, and Venus are either in the wrong distance from the sun, or the wrong gravity. You will have to get into the land of scifi and gigantic spinning hollowed out asteriods or stay with Venus or Mars. Venus is hellish and that leaves Mars.

I am not even getting into the fact that there is no magnatic field on either the Moon or Mars to protect life (there is some localized areas on Mars). There may be some future tech with man made magnatic fields to bypass this.

 

[rneuhaus@gmail.com]

The mission to Mars is the costliest of all man space missions.

Hence, we must try to minimize or avoid any mistakes or errors.

By now, we still do not have a robust technology, and experience to safeguard the astronauts' life from space. The best way to attain the objective to reach to Mars is by gradual small successful steps doing first the easiest before to the hardest missions. The hurry is the worst enemy of progress. The slow, is the symbol of firm progress toward to attain the desired objectives with fewer mistakes.

 

[none12345]

Where is the poll option for neither? I had to vote mars, because its the best of the 3.

Long term investment, with a serious desire to go to space, and a serious desire to fund it. Moon first, NEO, then mars.

However, i dont think we have the will or desire to fund long term space on the publics dime. I wish we did, but we clearly dont, we arent funding it right now, we wont in the forseeable future.

So, with that said....

Going back to the moon isnt exciting, it wont spark public interest. The only reason to do it is to say we can still do it....boring. What will spark the imagination is mars, so go to mars. Sure its riskier and costlier....but screw risk and cost, do it or go home.

Mars direct would not be my first choice as i said, but its the best way to garner support. If mars is too hard or costly, the next best thing would be a near earth object, such as an asteroid. Again to do something different then the moon. It would be harder to get to and back then the moon, but far easier to 'land' on then the moon. And its something new to capture the adventure spirit.

At our current level of funding, the moon just does not make sense. We do not have the funds to do a permanent base, which is the ONLY reason to do the moon. A real base that actually produces something usable for space travel. Be it fuel, or helium-3(if we can get fusion working on earth), or bulk mining of alumium etc, assuming you could mine, refine, then use it to build space ships in lunar orbit....at a price that is cheaper then earth. If we cant do any of that and wont fund it, the moon is worthless.

To make the moon or mars worth it. We would at the very least need to use a small base flown there with rockets to produce and build a larger base out of local materials. We dont need to build computers there, but building shells should be local materials. Water and oxygen generation should be local. Food should be grown locally. If we can just do those 4 things locally, water, oxygen, food, structural shelter....then we can go do mars or the moon. Sadly none of that is even on the drawing board.

Going there without carrying a single thing that will be useful for the future or for a base, is DUMB.

Sadly, the way it looks now. We are going to do the moon, the same way we did it with apollo, probably half a dozen times. Then we wont have the funding to continue. It will be a waste of money, and we will spend another 50 years waiting to try something again wondering WHY we made the apollo mistake all over again and learned nothing from the past.

 

[kelvinzero]

I selected the 'go for both' option, and I definitely agree that a couple of hundred billion would be worth it.. but..

I consider this vote the only conservative option. Until someone is prepared to give us double the budget they were not prepared to give us to go for one destination, this vote actually means: do more science.

These new discoveries dont make me want to jump for one world or the other. If we send people to the moon I sincerely hope that does not mean we are ignoring these surprising new discoveries from mars. It would also be silly to put a vast effort into a base on mars, and for fifty years not know exactly what we have just discovered on the moon.

In the mean time, we need a healthy launch industry, we need heavier probes for the same cost, and we need a lot more research into ISRU and closed cycle life support systems to carry on regardless.

My preferred first manned missions would be either to the moon, where a large robotic infrastructure had already been landed and in need of a little TLC, or to Phobos, to begin teleoperating robots already landed on mars.

Gravity is a problem; but we have many avenues for solutions, all of which are cheaper to test than putting someone on mars to see whether 0.4g is enough anyway.

 

[Floridian]

Things Mars has:
-Large quantities of water
-Large quantities of raw materials
-The most Earth-like conditions of any extra-solar body that we know of, (excluding Venus, it couldn't support life, Mars could).
-Mars used to have an atmosphere and lakes, etc.
-Mars offers much more protection from space than the moon, it would be much easier to construct outposts on its surface, well inside its surface, in caves.
-There are types of bacteria on Earth that could survive on Mars.
-We could create a more or less self-sufficient colony on Mars.
-Mars if much more valuable than the moon, in that it could not only support large colonies, but it provides a good spot to plan for space industrial operations, such as mining minerals on mars or from the asteroid belt.
-Its gravity is more than the moon, which would lesson some of the damage to the human body, but still weak enough to allow easy transit to and from the surface.

Things the moon has:
-Very low gravity, making it the ideal spot for factories to construct deep-space, space craft.
-Close proximity to earth, making zero gravity not much of a concern, as astronaut health not a concern as they could return to earth (mental health as well as physical).
-Its much closer to Earth.
-Jimmy hoffa's body.
-Lots of rocks.

 

[Kosh_09]

We should definitely go to the Moon first. We need to develop technology in several areas including propulsion, life support (including producing food and recycling of waste products) and simulated gravity before we will have the technical expertise to safely explore the solar system and beyond. These technologies will be developed in LEO and tested on space stations and lunar outposts before we can safely leave the security of near-Earth space.

What NASA and our partners are doing right now isn't flashy and sometimes it's downright boring - but it's necessary before we can routinely leave our planet and venture out into the cosmos. Mars isn't going anywhere and we shouldn't spend trillions to get there when we really haven't figured out what we want to use it for.

 

[mithridates]

A few people have survived 6 months to a year in microgravity with no long term ill effects, so it shouldn't be that much of a problem at 0.16g.

Even longer than that, in fact - the record holder is 437 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov

That's why I don't understand the concerns about 0.16g on the Moon. At 0g we can easily stay in space for over a year, and the difference between 0g and 0.16g is huge, since 0.16g works on you 24/7, including when sleeping, whereas on the ISS the only time when muscles can be given a workout is when astronauts spend time specifically doing so. Plus the Moon is only 3 days away, whereas Mars advocates seem to have neglected the fact that in order to get that 1/3 Earth's gravity you need to spend a year in 0g just to get there and back.

 

[kert]

To Wayne
We are designed to work in 1 G. Anything less than that and we will actually physically change (so there still wont be any "humans" on a distant body even if we colonize a moon in the Jupiter system). Much lower than 1 G and I think we will not survive.

Data to support these claims ? "You think" is not sufficient.

All other bodies besides Mars, and Venus are either in the wrong distance from the sun

And distance from sun matters .. why exactly ?

You will have to get into the land of scifi

Even humans landing on Mars is in the land of scifi for now. Didnt you even listen to the Augustine hearings at all ?

Venus is hellish and that leaves Mars.

Watch it, uninformed opinions are dangerous. Venus at cloud-top levels is actually very benign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonizati ... ing_cities

 

[kert]

Things Mars has:
-Large quantities of raw materials

Yes, like any other solid body in solar system. Thats a complete non-argument.
What matters for sustaining human colonization is chemical composition, especially te few key elements like carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, key metals.

-The most Earth-like conditions of any extra-solar body that we know of

Wrong, see Venus. And we dont know enough about Jovian and Saturn's moons to claim any of that.

-Mars used to have an atmosphere and lakes, etc.

Yeah, and this is important why, now ? There are bodies in solar system that have significant atmosphere and lakes now, present tense.

-Mars offers much more protection from space than the moon, it would be much easier to construct outposts on its surface, well inside its surface, in caves.

Whether living on Martian surface for long periods without radiation shielding is dangerous to humans or not is completely unknown at the moment. We havent sent one living organism yet anywhere near mars.
And if you live in caves, it matters little if the ceiling is made from lunar, martian or mercurian soil.

-There are types of bacteria on Earth that could survive on Mars.

Yeah, so ? There are probably a few types that could survive on Io or Europa as well. We are not colonizing the solar system with bacteria, are we ?

-We could create a more or less self-sufficient colony on Mars.

When we are so far along, we are quite likely able to create self-sufficient colonies elsewhere as well. By no means is Mars "ultimate" destination.

-Mars if much more valuable than the moon, in that it could not only support large colonies, but it provides a good spot to plan for space industrial operations, such as mining minerals on mars or from the asteroid belt.

Huh ? Moon offers way better base for industrialization, just because its actually possible to conduct telerobotic work on the surface, with driver sitting on earth ( See Lunokhod )

-Its gravity is more than the moon, which would lesson some of the damage to the human body, but still weak enough to allow easy transit to and from the surface.

There is no data available to determine the long-term effects of less than 1G gravity on human bodies. For all we know, human body could function perfectly in 1/20th gravity. There is just no data available to support any arguments one way or another.

In summary, i only see half-informed handwaving, nothing substantiated.

Mars may have an advantage in chemical composition over moon because it has carbon and nitrogen, but this is more than made up by proximity of moon, and then this ignores moons of the gas giants, free-flying platforms in asteroid belts, venusian possibilities and so on.
Calling Mars "ultimate" is just incredibly uninformed and short-sighted.

 

[CosmicGas]

We're not ready to go to Mars. Even if we started right now it would take funding for the next 30 or 40 years just to make one trip. However the Moon has alot more to offer than many people realize. In-situ resouce utilization could lead to the Moon becoming an industrial power house. (They thought Alaska was worthless back in the 1800s.) With aluminum, titanium, glass, many other minerals, oxygen, unlimited solar energy, Helium 3, and now water, the possibilities are endless. Vacumn is actually beneficial in many industrial prosseses, such as cryogenics, and metal puritys. Read (Ben Bova's) "Welcome to moon base". Tourism, Human powered flight inside pressurized domes. ( (Marshall T Savage's) ulta tall Trees.

 

[Jaime_Frontero]

Mars.

A ridiculous debate.

As RAH famously remarked: "Once you're in orbit, you're half way to *anywhere*."

Why would we expend the energy to escape our one-G gravity well, only to plunge into a well of one-third the strength (1/6 in + 1/6 out)?

You want to collect energy? Put solar cells in orbit. Why put them on the Moon?

You want a base off the Earth? Put it in orbit, where departure to points unknown will have an delta-v cost of next to nothing. And build a decent space station while you're at it.

We don't know everything about the Moon - but we know enough. We'll never breathe the air, or eat the food grown in its soil under an unsheltered sky. There are surprises aplenty that wait for us there; no doubt. But leave them for the post-docs, over the next hundred years. Let's get our metaphorical eggs out of this damn basket of a planet; which we're turning into a basket case.

There's so little difference in the cost of going to Mars versus going to the Moon. Travel time, mostly. Hardly any difference at all in fuel cost, and not much in the cost of the required space craft.

The thing is; even if Mars is dead, it could be made to live. The Moon will never live: in more ways than one.

Pay attention please - here's what the Moon is good for: war.

No planet will ever win a war waged against a well-colonized satellite. Gravity says so. We've known that since we first built castles on the tops of hills and mountains, so we could roll boulders down on our enemies.

So... not only do I think we should go to Mars - but I also believe we might consider nuking the Moon until it glows. Take that gravitational advantage away from the warmongers amongst our species.

I wonder if detonating, on the Moon, all the nuclear weapons possessed by every nation on Earth would be enough to render the Moon uninhabitable (and unusable) for the next few thousand years? A twofer!

Leave the Moon for lovers with lowered eyes, and scholars with robots.

Mars is the direction of growth for our species.

 

[Lancelot_64]

Fellow space enthusiasts, all I can say is this.. If you want to see a manned Mars landing in your lifetime you had better request it soon. Granted there is a ton of technology and many dollars needed to attain these goals since Apollo technology was not scaleable and is essentially being re-engineered. I have never seen any process move as slow... It's quite frustrating isn’t it? I am 44 and have been waiting since my youth for at the least a return to the moon... To grasp how long its been - I saw a pic of the new shuttles heat tiles in the Weekly Reader 5th grade,(1976) and we are not much further along with manned flight today.. Sad... However, I will admit the un-manned missions (satellite, probes and rovers etc...) have been amazing to say the least... The space station is awesome as well.

Since these undertakings have such tremendous lag... I voted for the two pronged approach. Actually the moon and mars is one and the same mission... The mars mission is simply longer in scope. Build the moon technology correctly and it should take a very short time to kick off the mars mission as the matured technology should be scaleable. I would hope the very intelligent people involved in this work shy away from creating any 'moon specific' hardware and or procedures. Given the scalability of hardware and procs I would recommend that they aggressively pursue mars mission infrastructure now while the moon missions are underway... with intent of rapid progression to mars... Months or a year instead of decades to make the leap... Unless I am mistaken we have well over 95% of the technology and know-how at present... Similar to Apollo where these massive vessels were being created one after another there are some savings to be had by continuous production no?

Perhaps the challenge needs a different SPIN to grab more political attention? We are doing more than fooling around and simply cracking rocks to answer parlor questions with these achievements... I would say space superiority is vital to each country's security and personally I believe upcoming challengers such as China and a few (scary) others already know this... All it takes is a rogue to drag a rock to earth and let it go... Will we be able to stop him? Monitor him? If it the impactor occurs naturally are we ready to mitigate the risk? With this train of thought, as space access becomes commonplace the risk of attacks becomes a very real threat.. In my eyes the threat is now Armageddon and not simply bus bombings.. To be able to control these aspects we will need to be as comfortable in space as we are protecting our countries on terra firma today.. None of us are there yet we don’t have the hardware or the expertise.. (at least this is not public knowledge)

Long term future - It would be shame if America's future inhabitants lost its stake or right to new assets or territories... interpret that statement as you see fit. I do remember in the not so distant past a country placing a flag under the north pole to lay claim... Radical thoughts? Who knows, but I can tell you for certain you and I do not know this answer.. "He who hesitates loses" – and the stakes are huge.

 

[Lancelot_64]

Until we have the propulsion and radiation shielding problems licked, let's just go to the moon and get the experience of living 'off-world'. Once again, we, as human beings, are living and planning for the 'near-term'. Space travel must be considered in 'century' increments. Budgets must me 50 to 100 years planned out. Goals are fine if they are realistic. Let's face it, why do we want to spend nine months to a year getting to Mars, then have the mission end in possible failure when we can't mount a rescue mission because it would take a year to get there?

If we can reduce the the travel time to Mars to 2-3 months, then it would be worth going. Let's train first on the moon, get our act together. Open it up to private enterprise. At the same time fund the universities and research labs to develop the next generation of propulsion to replace chemical rockets.

Next, let's go out and capture an asteroid and place it in a high earth orbit with the ability to keep it there while we study methods for deflecting objects in orbit in the event we detect a possible collision.

So what if all this takes the next 30 years. In a hundred years, when we have the propulsion, shielding and a fleet of ships, we'll be zipping around the inner solar system on a routine basis.

Mars as a goal is fine but short-sighted. We should set our sights on Jupiter. I'm not saying go to Jupiter first. If we can make it to Jupiter and back, then Mars would have already been visited and the means to 'zip' around the solar system would be there and finally, the human race could start looking at expanding outward toward the stars.

We are a 'what can you do for me today' civilization. We don't live long enough to plan that far ahead. If our life-span was 150 years, then long-term planning would be a reality. So the answer is to convince the people who make these decisions to think 'long term'. That's probably the toughest assignment out of all.

I want to go to Mars as bad as anyone here. But I don't want to go if there's a good chance I won't return. I know if I don't come back, the human race may not make another attempt for 50-100 years. So let's develop the technology to at least give the flight crew an 80% chance of returning safely. That means giving them a ship(s) and the means to get there and back relatively fast. They can stay on the surface as long as they want if that's the plan. If the plan is to establish a base the first time out, then so be it.

I guess what I'm saying is: Let's not stretch the envelope to the point where the risks outweigh the rewards. There will always be risks in space travel and in the future people will lose their lives in space. All I'm saying is let's reduce those risks as much as possible. So what if we're not around to see it. I expected to be on Mars by 1985. But then again, thinking back, it would have a shoestring trip and probably would have failed the first time out. And what if it was a success. Would we have gone again? I think not. Did we go back to the moon?

The moon for now with moon-bases, mining, construction. Telescopes on the farside. Regular trips from LEO to the moon and back. A couple of tourists thrown in. Construction and testing of a hi-velocity vehicle with non-chemical propulsion. Make it boring and the the human race will set it's sights on bigger things.

I just thought I would rant a bit!

Regards,

CTG

Please dont put an asteriod at my back door lol.. we can experiment at the moon perhaps? hmmm

 

[SpaceJeff]

I agree with kravjar666, particularly since he noted the potential for mass-driver-driven launches from the surface of the Moon to wherever else you want to go in the Solar System. We would have essentially unlimited electric power from a variety of potential sources, including solar panels and nuclear systems recently discussed on SPACE.com. This would completely eliminate the mass required for propellant and oxidizer for an outbound journey. Of course, if you want to put people on such a spacecraft, you're going to have to come up with something very unique that would probably have to involve sending a manned craft to dock with the mass-driver-driven Solar System spacecraft and to there unload its precious cargo of astronauts, cosmonauts, and the like; however, even this rather odd approach involves only enough chemical propellants (or NERVA-style nuclear rocket power, or ion engine power, or whatever) to accelerate the CREW to the ship - the ship makes the trip without propellants (other than those necessary for maneuvering and slowing for orbital insertion or landing).

Mass driver technology is well-tested and reliable. In fact, if you've ridden either "Superman - The Escape" at Magic Mountain in California or the Aerosmith roller coaster ride in Orlando's Disney World, you've already been accelerated by a mass driver. The key, of course, is to use them in a location that is stable, both physically and in terms of available power, and the Moon certainly meets both criteria. Let's head back to Luna for now, and learn (and, therefore, make mistakes) three days' flight from Earth before we start the same thing on Mars.

 

[portugal]

First we need to go back and live in the moon.
Then, on the other side, we don´t have any ship (and orion is not that ship) to get to mars and return. The russians thought on that and the only way was sending a soyuz with 2 secondary stages and place it on orbit of mars and sending another soyuz with 1 secondary stage for the going there. And for fuel proposals they needed to send the first soyuz only 2 months before launching the crew ship there. So that had a great deal of danger of anything going wrong the the astronauts would be lost without any way to be returned to Earth.
So if we can get a outpost on the moon and, even that we need to send the pieces from the Earth, build the ship there, the fuel need for going and return would be less than sending the ship from the earth. And anything that could go wrong could be corrected before the departure.
We had a way to go to the moon in the 70s. We dropped that way and continued with the low orbit operations. The cargo horse was the space shuttle program. That program placed the USA on the first line of human space exploration. There only ticker was that Russia had the MIR operational. Now with the ISS we are all on the same side. After the ISS is complete we will go back to send pieces has a rocket stage. So why not use the ISS has a turning point and build a ship that can go from the ISS to the Moon and return to the ISS? The fuel needs would drop big and the mass could be bigger. The other side was that we needed a ship to go there... but with the new cargo ships we can have that. Ariane can launch a piece of the ship, Energia could launch another, Atlas can take one and the japanese h2 can take another one. The russians have the Soyuz for human flight. The only problem now is that the USA will be without any human flight for 5 to 9 years. Only after orion can fly safely that can be done.
And don´t think that private industry will be helping on that... remember that private industry just have 1 single goal: Profits. And for getting profits of a venture like that it can take a lifetime...
(just think on all the private enterprises that are now seeking the space travel. All of them are just doing it because the govern will pay them or the turists could book some travels in a near future. But with the big problems that are still raising on the world economy, those things will have a price at the level that now are been payed to visit the ISS)

 

[kert]

Mars.
A ridiculous debate.
....
There's so little difference in the cost of going to Mars versus going to the Moon.

Sorry, i spilled my morning coffee over this.

You have got to be kidding, right ?

 

[fghhgf]

Mars, the Moon is a horrible place, Mars is the second safest place in the Solar System, just because there is a bit of water there(The Moon) does not change much in my view. But first we need to develop a better method of propulsion and then follow a Mars direct plan to ensure safety as much as possible, I don't think a one way trip is the way to go either I don't think anyone sane AND qualified enough would volunteer for that anyway.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Mars, the Moon is a horrible place, Mars is the second safest place in the Solar System.

There's not really that much difference between the two. In either case, there is little or no atmosphere, little or no accessable water (so far), and high radiation environments.

 

[nimbus]

Little or no accessible water on mars? What about what Phoenix landed on? That picture of a big 10km lake of water ice? Pack ice at Elysium Planitia? Glaciers in Hellas?
http://www1.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoe ... 80513.html Is this not a sign of relatively abundant accessible water or water ice?

 

[MeteorWayne]

The key word is accessable. Mass to Mars costs MANY times the price of mass to the moon for machinery to harvest it.

Long term, sure Mars has more water.

In the next 30 years, which is more realistic? And I admit I'm a short term viewer, since I won't make it 30 years