Will we be on Mars in 2066?

[Colonâ„¢]

All that's going to happen with global warming is that Holland gets drowned. No biggie.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Wycoff
This is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about.

Why try to leave? Because one day our survival may depend upon it.

Uh huh. And what the HELL is going to happen to make this planet less hospitable than Mars? Or are you referring to some sort of gigantic doomsday meteor? Or perhaps that we will some day run out of resources, so we need to spend massive amounts of resources today in order to secure a steady supply of martian rock for our children?

No, wait: we'll invent Warp Drive and magically bend several light-years of space so we can fly quickly to all the viable planets out there, which we will definitely be able to identify from here by some process other than elimination.

[Kuciwalker]

Venus is a better pick than Mars for colonization anyways.

[Elok]

Say what? Doesn't Venus have a surface pressure that would crush our skulls like eggshells, plus massive clouds of toxic gas and a temperature in the hundreds?

[Will9]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Venus is a better pick than Mars for colonization anyways.

The soil on Venus so hot that will burn almost any Earthly substance.

[Kuciwalker]

Venus' atmosphere is significantly denser than air, so that air is about half as effective as a lifting gas there as helium is on Earth. At high altitudes in its atmosphere the temperature range is also fairly earthlike (0-50 degrees C), and solar power is very effective. Thus, flying cities.

[Kuciwalker]

Oh, and Venus has Earthlike gravity - we don't know whether humans can live healthily for long periods of time in Mars gravity.

[Whoha]

I think we won't. space travel is expensive,dangerous,won't get politicians elected anymore,etc and we are unwilling to incur said costs.

Outta curiousity, why don't they have nuclear powered space ships?

the Russians have some nuclear powered sats, but mainly we've been too wussy to risk putting nuclear stuff in orbit.

[Kuciwalker]

Their sats don't use true nuclear power though, do they? I can't imagine someone fitting an actual reactor onto a satellite... I assume they use something like the Voyager probes did.

[Spec]

This poll is invalid!!

Are you talking about man mission or robot mission...?

Spec.

[Kuciwalker]

We've had robots on Mars for 35 years.

[Straybow]

I vote "just barely." By that I mean 50/50 possibility.

[DanS]

There's a good chance we'll have colonies on Mars by then.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Winston
Yeah, why climb the highest mountain?

Why climb the highest mountain, and then stubbornly try to live on it despite it being a completely inhospitable environment?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by General Ludd Why climb the highest mountain, and then stubbornly try to live on it despite it being a completely inhospitable environment?

This poll isn't about Mars colonization, it's about a manned Mars mission.