When Will We Go to Mars?

When will we go to Mars? Good question. Many scientists and enthusiasts of the space program ask themselves this very question. Of course, the answer is not exactly set in stone.

Although the so-called "space race" of the 1960's between the United States and the Soviet Union provided significant advances in technology, the national focus has shifted in more recent decades.

And although a trip to the moon with today's technology is still a somewhat challenging task, a trip to Mars with the same technology is almost prohibitively expensive.

It is widely believed that a good faith effort to send humans to Mars would have a direct mission cost of between $300 billion to $1 trillion-an amount of financial resources that seems unjustifiable given an uncertain economic climate, rising number of retirees, and rapidly climbing healthcare costs.

As Carl Sagan wisely pointed out in his book Cosmos, it is unlikely for us to get into "deep space" missions-either in our solar system or beyond-with so much money being spent on life support activities such as agriculture and health care.

We simply have too many people on Earth at the moment; the financial resources available for risky, uncertain human spaceflight to Mars is not sufficient. Many politicians don't feel that the risk-reward ratio is high enough to devote resources to a Mars mission overnight.

And yet, advances are being made. We continue to survey the Martian terrain and study the soil with increasingly sophisticated rovers, satellites, and probes.

The U.S. space program is phasing out the costly space shuttles; the hope is that by 2015 all U.S. spaceflight will be done using the powerful Atlas rocket system. (Similar to the Saturn V that took men to the Moon, the Atlas rockets will be monstrous and will house a "space capsule" at the top as opposed to a space shuttle).

Although subtle, this is an indication that the American government has its eyes on Mars and beyond. A massively powerful rocket system such as the Atlas will be needed to lift heavy payloads into space. In addition to the capsule housing our astronauts, a Mars-bound mission would need many additional rocket launches to bring auxiliary materials to the base before the arrival of the human capsule. Food, water, fuel, and materials for constructing a greenhouse of some sort would all be needed.

So, when will we actually set foot on Mars? If the world continues to spiral into economic malaise, maybe not until 2050 or 2100. If we get back on the right track, however, I personally feel a Mars mission would be ready to go by 2025 or 2030 at the latest.

A strong financial or survival incentive would obviously increase our collective determination to get to Mars quickly. If, for example, an unavoidable asteroid were headed toward Earth, we would need to find a new home-and fast! Also, perhaps more promising, if industry is able to turn Mars into a profit engine, you would see an increase in commercial interest. (Some have speculated that Mars could make major money as a tourist destination. Others claim that the asteroids in orbit near Mars could be mined; some individual asteroids may contain billions of dollars worth of precious metals. We would probably mine them now if the "delivery costs" to Earth weren't prohibitively high.)