• Question: how long will it take us to get to mars?

    Asked by 08bowmanl to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 19 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi,
      Some russian scientists are currently doing an experiment to mimic what it would be like to send people to mars. They’ve locked some people in a room for 520 days. So, I guess, it would take that long to get there? But I can’t be sure.

      You can read more about that experiment here:
      http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Mars500/

      Eoin

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      HI 08bowmani. How long as in when will we finally get around to it? Or how long as in if a rocket blasted off today, how long would it take to get there?

      The answer to the latter depends on how fast you are going of course – I have read that it takes satellites 6+ months to get there, but might take a rocket a couple of years.

      The answer to the former depends on how much money countries are willing to put into space research, because getting astronauts there and allowing them to survive when they arrive will involve technology that hasn’t been developed yet. At the moment, with the global economy in bad shape, I would imagine that it is not a top priority, so they aren’t likely to invest enough money any time soon!

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi 08bowmani

      I suspect we already have the technology to get to Mars so it should be possible very soon. The actual journey is several months each way, so the astronauts better take something good to read.

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      hi 08bowmanl good question.
      Well it’s quite far so quite a long time! Mars is on average 140 million miles from the sun, very far compared to the moon, which at only 236,000 miles is about in your back garden! Using normal rokets (ones that burn chemicals and throw these out behind them) it would take about six months. But if you used a type of ion thruster (called VASIMR) – like the rockets i test but alot bigger – then that journey time reduces to maybe six weeks!
      There is though a problem in getting the astronauts home. We would have to wait for six months (i think) for the orbits of earth and mars to line up again, meaning that the total journay could be nearly two years. This puts big risks on the astronauts, especially from radiation cell damage whilst in space.

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