The pessimism I've seen in this thread reminds me of the 1920 New York Times editorial that ridiculed the idea of rockets functioning in space and going to the Moon. It also reminds me of the following which appeared in the Times during the Apollo 11 mission: "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error." patrick On 03 Jan 2008, at 06:52, Gary Vardon wrote:
Joe and others, Some comments on a manned Mars mission 1. I believe that the first few manned missions will end in failure. We will have to do many manned missions until we solve all the problems involved if we do at all. This will up the cost tremendously.
2. After one successful mission the cost of the next mission probably will still be too great to repeat so that we would not be able settle Mars with a permanent base.
3. Going to Mars with a manned mission does not entail solving one or a few engineering challenges but rather a vast slew of them so analogies to other challenges may not be relevant.