Zach Weinersmith is the lunatic responsible for the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic, which is also those things.
Actually I suspect we could send a round trip mission, by dusting off the old Orion Drive concept. It would allow us to brute force our way past most of the other issues by letting us send more mass on a shorter trip; heavier shielding, more supplies, more redundancy etc. I doubt it would work for a colony - there’s not an unlimited supply of fissionable material - but for a single round trip by a world that has decided to not care about the costs (or the various political issues that killed the idea IRL) it sounds doable.
On the other hand it does seem almost like cheating; it is the most brute force of technological solutions after all. Don’t improve any of the other technology needed, just apply MOAR POWER.
For anyone curious what this is about, here is more info than anyone could possibly need about the incident, complete with diagrams of the command module control panels.
Apollo 12 was struck by lightning not once but twice during the first few minutes after launch, wreaking havoc with its power systems, turning on more warning lights than anyone had ever seen in a simulation, and scrambling telemetry with the ground.
At the bottom of Panel 3, in front of Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean, there were controls for the spacecraft telecommunications system. One of these controls was the three-position switch for the Signal Conditioning Equipment, SCE. It had been flicked upwards to the NORMAL position during launch preparations and would usually remain in this position throughout the mission. This switch position would have the SCE electronics use its primary power source. Yet, according to John Aaron, the problem appeared to be in this particular part of the system, and Aaron had figured out that the way to fix the problem was to select the secondary power source within the unit. Alan Bean’s spacesuit gloved finger performed this emergency procedure, which resulted in the onboard instrumentation finally receiving normal power again. Within moments, clear data began to filter in onto the screens in Mission Control.
Or (assuming a multi-person crew) killed each other. There was a brief bit years ago on “Robot Chicken” titled “Mission to Mars: Day 185”, and it was a very short clip of two astronauts seated together in a spaceship; one is staring angrily at other and muttering in a low voice simmering with rage, “I HATE YOU.”
My youngest met him years ago at a convention, told him about me and my job as a prison physician combatting Hep C, and he drew a cartoon of me riding a tiger. I cherish that cartoon.
That is so cool! You should post a picture somewhere.
Thanks! That’s excellent. I really should read his Mars book. I loved his immigration one.
The short answer is, no we don’t currently have that.
To me, a more interesting question is whether in a 10-year timeframe, with cost being no object, what would a sustained Mars colony look lke? I think it’s doable, assume that it will be in large part externally sustained, and it’s not expected to be permanently sustained (say, a 12-month habitation).
Caveat, I’m quite sure Elon Musk won’t be involved, as I’m quite sure he has no real plan for going to Mars, just fantasies intended to attract investment that he intends to use for other self-enrichment schemes.
Well we can start* with listing what makes this harder than the moon landings
- Much further distance (~145x)
- A bit over 2x moon gravity makes launching from Mars harder
- The OP seems to be describing living on Mars for a prolonged period and therefore needing water / air / nitrogen recycling etc
- Mars has some atmosphere…probably a net benefit, but listing for completeness.
I think the main kicker of course is (3).
While the distance (1) is insane, since space is frictionless, it’s just a matter of time rather than fuel (although the energy needs for the crew on a voyage that long are significant).
But living on Mars breaks down to many separate problems, many of which we’ve struggled to work around individualy on Earth under idealized conditions. Oh and there’s the issue of Martian soil being poisonous. I definitely wouldn’t want to be in the first crew to try this.
* Ok, it’s weird “starting” on post 50, but I just got here 
The atmosphere definitely makes the entry & landing harder than a vacuum landing. It’s just thick enough to cause all sorts of problems for stuff otherwise designed for vacuum operations, but is not nearly thick enough to use as a braking resource.
Whether it has any benefits once you’re on the surface is beyond my knowledge. But my bet is “no”.
Isn’t protection of the crew from cosmic radiation on such a long journey also still an unsolved obstacle?
Ah yes of course.
Also muscle and bone weakening, blood pooling etc from being in zero G. It’s a “solved” problem in the sense that we know that rotating a part of the ship could work, or we just accept that they will need to work out for hours each day and suffer some ill-effects anyway. But a more practical and/or complete solution is not on the immediate horizon.
Closer to ~340x, no? (Moon: 250K miles. Mars: 84.5M miles.)
In both cases I googled the closest distance they are to the earth, which is 363k km for the moon and 62m km for mars.
Ah. I’m impressed that Google gave me the actual real-time distance to Mars on this particular day.
Not sure why this posted twice.
It’s not like the path from here to Mars is a straight line.
I didn’t claim it was, just putting some ballpark numbers in. If you want to do the maths for likely trajectories for possible future launch windows and specific rocket velocities be my guest.
Heh, no thanks, I wouldn’t have any idea how to do it. But the launch date and the relative positions of Mars and Earth in their orbits matters a lot. Distance is mainly a matter of time for our current ability to travel in space.