We'll see the first man on Mars in a few short years.

[VincentMcConnell]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17439490

This is kind of depressing though, as I know I probably won\'t get to walk on Mars as one of the first people. There will be a thousand rich people signing up long before several astronauts who are qualified will get to go.

500,000 dollars for a landing...

[Shedao]

Full support for a private manned mars mission!

This way there will be no cancelled scientific missions ;D

[Sordid]

'The whole system [must be] reusable - nothing is thrown away. That\'s very important because then you\'re just down to the cost of the propellant.

Didn\'t they say the same thing about the Space Shuttle? It\'d be awesome if they actually pulled it off, but I\'m skeptical.

Also:

'I\'m quite confident that ultimately we could offer a round trip to Mars that the average person could afford - let\'s say the average person after they\'ve made some savings.' The entrepreneur described this as about half a million dollars.

I want to know which country this guy lives in so that I can move there immediately. I suspect he lives on another planet entirely, though. At least in his head.

[Luigibro606]

The rocket looks like the Mei Long. ;D

[your mom]

Why mars..... going to the moon would be cheaper thinking about it

[SpaceBlunt]

The Chinese are planning, or even started their own space station. I read this ages ago but it went something along the lines of. Big ass space station, then to the moon and after onto mars. All this is planned for the next 20 odd years.

I\'ll search for the article

[what-the]

I would like to see man on Mars but the time it takes to get there could send the astronauts a little loopy unless we use cryogenics and that drug that could possible extend life works (more astronauts want to go).

[Kryten]

Umm, they\'ve already got their own space station, which their sending a crew to in June. Admittedly it\'s tiny, even the Chinese state press call it a \'docking target\', but the Salyut sized ones are planned to start going up just two years from now.

[SpaceBlunt]

Umm, they\'ve already got their own space station, which their sending a crew to in June. Admittedly it\'s tiny, even the Chinese state press call it a \'docking target\', but the Salyut sized ones are planned to start going up just two years from now.

ya i\'d seen the \'docking target\' ;P pretty tiny but very cool. Didn\'t relies crew was being sent up so soon, But having said that the Chinese don\'t drag their feet with things.

i do wish all our governments could get on tho, as we would already be on Mars, instead of making everything into a competition or a race or just even a fisty cuffs. But instead of building solar powered shuttles, we build nuclear powered missiles...

[Sordid]

Nah, I think competition is the way to go. Cooperation doesn\'t work. It was the space race that put man on the Moon forty years ago. From first human spaceflight to lunar landing in under a decade. And look what\'s happened in the last 20 years after the space race ended - the US, the Russians, the EU, Japan, and even Canada are working together, with far more advanced technology I might add, and what have they accomplished? They built a tin can in orbit, woo hoo. It\'s a very nice tin can, sure. And those robots they\'re sending out are pretty cool too. But it\'s all still peanuts to putting a human being on another celestial body.

I really hope the Chinese are serious about this. Because China, which everyone thinks of as the place where all those cheap products that don\'t work properly come from, China one-upping the self-proclaimed technological leaders of the world is just what the West needs to motivate it to finally remove its head from its anus and start doing something worthwhile again.

[Kryten]

I just realised India are going to have their first astronaut up well before CCDev is ready. We might be looking at a China-India space race! How cool is that?

[SpaceBlunt]

I just realise India are going to have their first astronaut up well before CCDev is ready. We might be looking at a China-India space race! How cool is that?

now that would be cool..

So if we are saying we need competition and revelry to get things done like go to the moon, all the nations should get together and organise a \'space Olympic games styley race\' where everyone gets a shuttle ready and on the whittle launch. You could even have multiple privately sponsored ships like from Virgin representing their home nations with different classes, lightweight, heavyweight etc..

It would probably end up like a episode of Wacky Racers, but would make great viewing

[bandit4910]

I\'m not for this private mission.

NASA needs to get to Mars already.

But the only way they\'ll get there by 2020 is if they start some huge donation thing...

I would donate money to them to go to Mars.

Oh yeah, Russia is planning to get to the moon in a few years, then a few years later send a launch pad up there...

The only reason I don\'t want a private mission is because we NEED rocks from Mars, to give us a hint if there was ever life on Mars or not.

At least the president gave us a hint.

He said he would try to get us to orbit Mars in the mid-2030s then a followed landing within that time.

[RedDwarfIV]

Didn\'t they say the same thing about the Space Shuttle? It\'d be awesome if they actually pulled it off, but I\'m skeptical.

Space Shuttle usually jettisoned its External Tank. Which meant a large amount of the equiment was unrecovered. Also, the Falcon-9 Heavy is supposed to get twice as much cargo into orbit as the Shuttle could get into Low Earth Orbit.

[Sordid]

Well yes, the Shuttle did have an expendable fuel tank, but most of the system was reusable, in particular the sophisticated and expensive parts. The idea was to cut costs, but it was actually more expensive to launch stuff on it than it would\'ve been using expendable rockets.

Then again, governmental programs aren\'t exactly known for being efficient. If this private company can pull this off and actually make a cheap reusable launch system, good for them.

[Richy teh space man]

What about the radiation from the sun? I thought that was the main thing limiting us from travelling outside of Earths SOI

[Sordid]

Obviously we\'ll have to turn the Sun off for the duration of the trip. It\'s going to be a bit of an inconvenience for the rest of humanity, but it can\'t be helped.

[Richy teh space man]

Yeah I suppose I\'d better stock up on blankets and flashlights too, just hope they don\'t take too long

[bandit4910]

Yeah I suppose I\'d better stock up on blankets and flashlights too, just hope they don\'t take too long

It takes a few months to get to Mars.

We will eventually find a way to block off radiation.

Hopefully by then we will have that way.

[Kryten]

We\'ve got plenty of ways. The actual NASA proposal is to use water tanks.

[Sordid]

Oh look.

I swear I\'ve seen this thing on Star Trek as well, but I can\'t find any pictures of it now and I\'m not watching all 79 episodes again just to find it.

[Drakomis]

Oh look.

I swear I\'ve seen this thing on Star Trek as well, but I can\'t find any pictures of it now and I\'m not watching all 79 episodes again just to find it.

I believe it is in... Star Trek: The Final Frontier or whatever

[Guest]

Id bet if NASA had proper funding we could be on mars in 2-5 years.

[VincentMcConnell]

The rocket looks like the Mei Long. ;D

Yeah I know! I think the Mei Long is based on Dragon. Whenever I build Dragon and the Falcon Rockets, I use the Down Under parts pack.

[Rascal Nag]

Awesome. This could catapult private space flight into a new era, as people wouldn\'t just dismiss it as a dead-end business endeavor. The more private space companies, the more competition, and the more competition, the better the product, obviously. And with better products we can explore farther!