Then there is the dark horse of China. The CNSA is developing it's manned capabilities at an impressive rate. The next Human beings to visit the Moon will almost certainly be Chinese, and soon too. If China then decide they're going to Mars then I've no doubts that they have the will to pull it off. Of course China saying they're going to do it may be enough to spur NASA - or at least NASA's political masters to make their own effort to beat them. There's nothing quite like national rivalry for driving a space program forward.
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tham153 say: definitely: 2041
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Gray Bold say: Crash land, maybe. Roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars have failed without completing their missions, and it has a reputation as a difficult space exploration target. Missions that ended prematurely after Phobos 1 & 2 (1988) include:
Mars Observer (launched in 1992)
Mars 96 (1996)
Mars Climate Orbiter (1999)
Mars Polar Lander with Deep Space 2 (1999)
Nozomi (2003)
Beagle 2 (2003)
Fobos-Grunt with Yinghuo-1 (2011)
Schiaparelli lander (2016)
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say: there is zero chance of a successful mars mission in this century , nasa talks big but does not have the technology or the money to do it , 40% of unmanned mars missions have failed so far , the most likely scenario if someone stupid enough enough tries it is a crew sailing off into space or arriving in the vicinity of mars dead
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Spock (rhp) say: yes
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orpheus_sword say: Land humans? If so, then no. There's no scientific reason to justify the enormous expense, and at least right now, there's no political will either.
Remember... the apollo program got ~5% of GDP, and all of NASA is currently about 0.5%. That would mean a 10 times increase in funding just to return to apollo-like levels. But we do more with NASA now, and mars is considerably harder to reach than the moon. There won't be any progress on this front in at least 10 years.
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quantumclaustrophobe say: I'm optimistic that it'll be a few years *before* then, so... I'm going to guess yes. That being said - in 1975, after the Apollo/Soyuz Test project ended, I was thinking they'd be gearing up for a Mars program....
And... Stillllllllllllll waiting....
Realistically - in today's political and economic climate - we're going to need to partner with other space agencies to get there; Have the Russians build a transfer vehicle, the Japanese build communication satellites and Martian rovers, the Indians build an inflatable habitat for the surface, the US could build the descent vehicles, while the ESA could be assigned a Mars Ascent vehicle... Split the work, split the finances - we could *all* get to Mars....
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