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are not supported by society is a good way to get its budget cut faster. It is far easier to continue doing safer local missions or unmanned missions to farther away targets than it is to stretch the bounds of manned space flight like the Apollo and space shuttle programs once did.

Whether NASA would perform the mission or not, the fact is that it would be extremely dangerous to the crew. The shortest possible mission with current technology would last at least a year and a half, and to have any useful time on the surface as well as being able to catch an orbit that does not take an inordinate amount of fuel (relatively speaking: the whole mission takes an inordinate amount of fuel as it is) would require closer to two and a half to three years.

Of this time, at least ten to twelve months would be spent in space with all of its associated dangers, including radiation, lack of gravity (unless the spacecraft spins to produce artificial gravity), psychological isolation, and so on. Once on the planet, they would face a whole new set of dangers, including dust storms. Without being able to receive help from Earth, or even real-time communication, each danger compounds the overall chance of failure (where success means the whole crew returns alive to Earth).

The technological difficulties can be overcome, and redundancy and backup supplies can be built in to the plan, at increased expense. But space travel to Mars would certainly be dangerous, probably too dangerous for NASA to handle at the moment. That does not necessarily mean it cannot or should not be done. The real question becomes, is it worth the cost?

Learn more about this author, Reiko Yukawa.
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