Dr. Werner Von Braun, the rocket scientist who put us on the Moon in 1969, said at that time that if present funding were to continue, he could have men on Mars by 1980. However, funding did not continue and president Richard Nixon shut the program down. It is all a matter of funding. Please read the excellent book, "The Case for Mars" now in a new edition, by Dr. Robert Zubrin, PhD, available on amazon and other places. It is an excellent read.
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The main obstacle with going to Mars is the launch window, which opens only every 2 years. So an astronaut would have to spend about 6 months on the way to Mars via a Hohmann transfer, another year on Mars itself, and another 6 months back. Hollywood movies that show astronauts going to Mars and then immediately back again are therefore inaccurate. It's not like a "simple" trip to the moon that takes about a week. NASA actually developed a plan for going to Mars, which they called the (surprise
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