Eggs. Baskets. C’mon guys.
We need more baskets.
At my age (76) I can say certainly not.
I’m 67, and voted “No.”
I’m 59 and said No.
The thing with exploration is that you can always argue against it by pointing to other things that are more deserving of attention and money. World hunger! Disease! But planetary exploration isn’t just a walk to Mars to take some pictures to put on Facebook.
Trinopus nailed it:
Every time we push our limits and try to do something big, we gain all sorts of other things along the way. It’s because we can’t do it yet that we should try to do it. The constraints of the trip to Mars will push us to figure out how to make things smaller and lighter, and make better and more efficient engines. It’s such a long trip that it might make sense for them to grow their own food - how would they manage that in space? How can we protect the astronauts from the radiation they’ll encounter on the way? Solving these problems for a Mars trip will improve things for the rest of us, too.
I hope I get to see it in my lifetime, but I worry that the first trip will be one-way (privately funded - I doubt NASA would go for that plan). While we’d still learn so much from it, it would be sad if they never came home.
A better question would be to ask when it will happen-in 10, 20, 50, 100 years.
I’m 45 and I voted no.
I would like to see it happen but I don’t see anybody who would be willing to fund it in the next 40 years.
I find a manned Mars mission much more likely than a permanent moon base.
I’m 26 and I tentatively voted “yes” but under the assumption that I stretch the limits of my age potential.
Nah. One does not simply walk on Mars.
I’ll go further and say as long as space travel is based on chemical rocket combustion the answer is “never”. If that changes then a re-consideration will be necessary.
Given the insane cost and resources to this and the lack of a compelling scientific reason to go what are we going to do on Mars that robots can’t do for fraction of the cost and risk? On practical basis very little. It’s would be strictly an ego driven visit.
No, and I’m also leaning towards never.
There’s not much point really.
It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.
I might go along with that POV.
Definitely not in 10, extremely unlikely in 20, possible in 50 with dedicated effort, and perhaps likely in 100 provided that one or more nations or corporate interests develop space resource extraction and utilization technologies and a orbital manufacturing infrastructure.
Many space enthusiasts assume that a crewed mission to Mars is just a slightly harder version of the Apollo program, but in fact the distance, duration, radiation environments, delta velocity requirements, and other challenges this effort fundamentally more difficult and costly and complicated than the short duration missions to the Moon. A crewed Mars mission would require logistical and sustainability requirements that are vastly beyond what current launch and space habitation technologies can provide, not to mention a degree of individual subsystem reliabilities which are at least two orders of magnitude greater than current systems such as the International Space Station. There are a series of enabling technologies, such as nuclear propulsion, in-situ resource utilization, space manufacturing and assembly, space and hostile environment habitation, et cetera which need significant advancement before an effective crewed mission to Mars or another planet could be sent with a reasonable probability (>95%) of success and at a cost which would not be exorbitant.
As for China engaging on such a mission, it should be pointed out that the Chinese are demonstrating the same basic capabilities developed by the United States and the former Soviet Union circa 1965, and doing so at a relatively slow pace. While the Chinese are certainly showing an interest in the military applications of space systems, the crewed program appears to be strictly as a demonstration of national prestige. Given the difficulties encountered by the Apollo missions with the Lunar surface environment (specifically the charged dust which clings to everything and may present adverse health effects for long term exposure) a permanent Lunar base by China or any other interest is unlikely. The cost and technical challenges of an interplanetary mission are well beyond the existing and projected capability of the Chinese space program, which has yet to send even an uncrewed vehicle beyond Earth orbit.
Stranger
“fire”?
Google it. 
Delusional I say… no human will step foot on the red planet in this century more less in the lifetime of anyone posting here, and this is coming from a bonafide space nerd.
Money, political will and need. Unless diamond rivers or Marvin is found, we are not going. 
I vote no, and that’s at least as much me hoping that we don’t try. Yes, space exploration is really cool, and getting the first pioneers into space and onto the moon were amazing accomplishments, but those were driven by the cold war more than science. What sort of real benefit do we get from sending humans to Mars that justifies that expense and risk over a well designed probe? It’s not like humans can do anything on Mars they don’t have the tools for, particularly given the harsh environment.
This is a big reason why we haven’t sent more people to the Moon in decades and why we haven’t started seriously working toward going to Mars. Sure, people would line up for it even if it were guaranteed they wouldn’t return alive, but even the expense of getting them there alive is magnitudes greater than a probe, and imagine the egg on the face of the people who tried and things went horribly wrong. So, other than a nationalistic ego stroke, it just isn’t worth the expense and risk, the return on knowledge per investment is just WAY too high, and given the current economic issues and diminishing resources, it just looks like a worse and worse idea.
That said, I would be in favor of sending men to Mars or some other non-terrestrial body if the goal were to create a colony and/or terraform it, because we’d need to be sending people there to do that job, though it would probably need to start with some probes to set things up first. Still, the idea of colonizing and terraforming Mars or some other body is clearly well beyond the expected lifespan of anyone alive, so I’m not holding my breath for that.
Well, flying a kite in a thunderstorm was of absolutely no use to anyone, at the time. Electricity was an vague curiosity that some odd people fooled around with.
As I see it, the largest impact of a Mars mission will not be technological but sociological. We will have to train a quarter of a million candidates from infancy in order to get ten astronauts for the two year mission. Amongst other things, these children will learn multiple languages (because one might be more suitable than others for a given situation), practice biofeedback and metabolism control (easier than trying to design actual suspended animation), but most importantly, they will learn and develop techniques that will allow ten people to share a confined space without strangling each other purple.
Those getting-along-with-each-other methods and skills will leak out into the world at large and have a profound positive impact on all corners of global society. If no other reason can justify the Mars project, that alone would pay for it many times over.
(Which means, of course, I will be long gone.)
Dude, stop bogarting that roach.
Stranger