Do you think this statement is true? Given my great grandmother lived through the invention of the airplane to landing on the freaking moon. How likely is it that the first person to walk on Mars has already been born?
Unlikely; I think the glory days of the space program are over. Especially in America; I’d be surprised if the person who walks on Mars, when it does happen in hundreds of years, will be an American; he will probably be Chinese.
When that guy reaches Mars, could you ask him to check for my lost socks. My dryer has a worm hole to there.
The first person to walk on Mars will probably be a male under 40 years old. The statement is only true if we reach Mars in the next 40 years. I’d call that an even money bet, at best.
Hmm. I’d guess someone slightly older. Say, between 40 and 45. Astronauts aren’t generally that young. Average age of entry is about 36. I assume we’d have someone with extra experience heading for Mars.
False
IOW, will we get to Mars in the next 50 years or so.
Hmmm.
Yes. An awful lot can happen in 50 years.
Or pretty much nothing can happen. Look how far we have (not) gotten in the previous 40 
Interestingly, the entire crew of Apollo 11 were born in 1930, making them all close to 40 in 1969. The back-up crew was all of a similar age, so I think it’s a good guess the crew of a future Mars Mission will be in their late thirties.
So I’ll be optimistic and say yes. I don’t think the US public will allow it to retreat completely from manned space flight, and we’re running out of things to do in LEO, and a return to the Moon (which will probably also happen) is going to seem a little redundant.
So that leaves Mars, and two decades doesn’t sound impossible. We got to the moon in one, and if we start a Mars program in earnest in 2020, that gives us three decades to meet the window.
I remember that train of thought from 1985. We pretty much pinned the future of manned space flight on Christa McAuliffe, and that ended…badly. The the Soviet Union fell and we suddenly didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. So we got stuck in low earth orbit, and have since been doing little but whiling away the years, periodically reminiscing about the good ole days, not unlike Al Bundy.
Certainly the last 25 years of manned space-flight haven’t been exactly glorious. But to some extent I think that reenforces my point, even after having foolishly bet on the Space Shuttle and so condemning ourselves to LEO with no particularly meaningful mission, the US has continued to put billions into the Space Program. So long as the US remains a superpower, I don’t think it will ever allow itself to retreat from manned space-flight.
Nonsense, the US Space Program is already having plans for a return to the Moon and I expect a Mars landing by 2040 so for this question, yes.
“Having plans” is one thing; actually having a realistic schedule for technology development and a consistent budget to follow through is another. So far the Constellation program is going great…if by great you mean in halting sidesteps with shifting requirements and goals. Not one part of the Constellation system (Ares I and V boosters, Orion spacecraft, Launch Abort System, Earth Departure Stage, ground support equipment and gantry) are on schedule for the original 2014 Return to LEO date, much less a 2018 Return to Lunar Surface date. Any dates planned for a manned Mars mission are entirely speculative (read: complete hogwash), especially given that the Constellation system as currently configured simply doesn’t provide for a mission of that duration.
Note that it would be possible to do a high risk “flag planting” mission to Mars with mostly extant technology (albeit at a mission failure rate of >1%) and a concerted technology development program using nuclear fission propulsion (nuclear pulse, fissile salt, NERVA-type) and improving the state of the art of sustainable microecologies and microgravity human physiology could probably put us on the surface of Mars within 20-30 years of inception. But the current program doesn’t effectively support either approach, and not so much as an RFP for a detailed mission plan and technology development has been issued by NASA. The talk of a manned Mars mission is just so much bunting on the podium at this point. On that basis, I would have to disagree with the thesis of the o.p.; the first person to walk on the surface of Mars has not yet been born, and likely will not be for at least a couple decades to come.
Stranger
I think it will be centuries, if ever, before anybody lands on Mars. It’s orders of magnitude more difficult than landing on the Moon, and that was only just achievable with massive public support from the richest country in the world. Now that we have become used to the idea of space exploration, I just don’t see where the necessary combination of enormous amounts of money and public enthusiasm is going to come from. It is going to require a supra-national kind of budget, but that will inevitably diminish the willingness of a public of diverse nationalities to pay for it, especially when unmanned probes are sending back ever more detailed observations.
Why? I can imagine it to be pretty hard, but not “orders of magnitude” more difficult.
At least a year’s worth of life support, instead of a few days. Considerably more fuel required to get there and back. Sturdier lander and exploration equipment required. More psychological and physical stress on crew. Months of journey time during which paying public get restless.
Nah, too traditional. Society is trying to move away from that kind of thing to be more “progressive”. It will actually be a Native American-Brazilian-Lebanese transgendered left-handed Scientologist refugee with 12 toes.
I was thinking the same thing. There is no way in hell the first person to step on martian soil will be a stereotypical white western guy, even if he is by far the most qualified. At least not anytime soon.
As part of the Constellation program, NASA is working towards returning astronauts to the Moon by 2019 and has tentative plans beyond that of sending people to Mars between 2030 and 2040. If that comes true the first person to walk on Mars is probably currently between about junior high school and college age.
I agree. HUGE amounts of money would be required, not to mention the development of the vehicle and the rocket to launch it. There are no more Saturn rockets, so it would have to be something brand new. The vehicle itself, in order to support a crew for that long, would have to carry large supplies of food, water and oxygen, not to mention fuel. By 2050, science is going to more than have its hands full trying to figure out how to feed this planet and keep us all from becoming bacon, so I don’t see public support being there for what amounts to a grandstand effort.