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Asked by whiteleyinnit to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 22 Mar 2011.
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Charlie Ryan answered on 22 Mar 2011:
no in the near future no, but maybe one day!
One major problem with going to mars is the distance to mars – this varies a lot as mars and earth orbit the sun but is often over a hundred million kilometres!! This compares to the distance to the moon -where humans have been! – which is only a few hundred thousand kilometres! So it would, with current technology, take about six months to get to mars!! And NASA reckons the cost of a human mission there to cost hundreds of billions of dollars!!!
But i think that we could one day go on long holidays to mars – maybe people will take a martian gap year! With a new type of ion thruster (called VASIMR), which is a highly efficient spacecraft engine, the time to mars could be reduced to 6 weeks. So a long holiday may be possible!
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Julian Rayner answered on 22 Mar 2011:
I think it’s pretty unlikely, which is a shame – how cool would that be? Keeping humans alive in an environment where they don’t belong, like in a space station or on the moon or on Mars, is an incredibly costly and difficult thing to do, so I can’t imagine it being used for mass tourism.
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Eoin Lettice answered on 22 Mar 2011:
Hi whiteleyinnit,
At the moment, scientists are planning trips to Mars for later in this century. Also, you can now go into space for a trip if you have enough money!
That’s something we wouldn’t have dreamt about 30 years ago, so I think Yes, in teh future people will be able to visit mars on a space cruise or something like that!It would be great fun.
Eoin -
Stephen Moss answered on 22 Mar 2011:
Hi Whiteley
I think the long travelling time would put people off, though there are plenty of people who seem willing to spend weeks every summer sitting around Terminal 5 at Heathrow either waiting for a plane, or looking for their lost luggage. Perhaps this would be good ‘patience’ training for the months it would take to reach Mars.
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