Sure its a century from now but it is nice to see this level of thinking and not just from a western nation. As a first step the UAE is planning to send an unmanned probe to Mars in 2021. Last month this project was described as being "on track". This announcement was considered a further effort in the UAEs long term efforts to break away from their reliance on the petroleum industry and in to high tech. Note, article was by Adam Taylor in The Washington Post.
True. Though it wouldn't hurt us if we had more of that level of thinking still going on as well. Any medieval city deciding to build a cathedral needed the courage to plan for a century or two. Now planning beyond the next election seems ludicrously optimistic to some people.
Hey, that's democracy. The sort of person who seeks political power is going to confine his/her thinking to how to get the most votes when the next election rolls around. That automatically limits the scope of forward-planning. What is the point of investing in programmes that will bear fruit only at times more than four or five years in the future? Anyway, I'm damned skeptical about human exploration of space. There's every reason to believe that before anybody gets to Mars, they'll be thoroughly fried by solar radiation, from which the Earth's excellent magnetic field and atmosphere largely protect us surface-dwelling creatures. They haven't figured out a solution to this, even for Mars.
They figured it out years ago. Solar flare shelter aboard using the missions water supply tanked into the walls to provide the necessary shielding. You've got to carry the water anyway. Might as well use it for something else as well.
I'm surprised this is coming out of the UAE of all places, but I'm glad they're doing it, because hopefully it'll get more countries to step up to the plate. It's this kind of forward thinking and planning that will eventually break down the speed of light barrier to interstellar travel and colonization (if it's indeed possible in the future).
Certainly there's a limit on how much people will sacrifice for things that are far in the future. Regardless of where you stand on the climate change issue, for instance, you have to acknowledge that it's difficult for those who want greater regulations to get people to sacrifice today for gains that are decades or a century down the road, and which are--at best--only partial solutions to the problem. Oh, I don't think Mars is that great a hurdle. We build spacecraft that last for decades in space and we understand that environment very well. I think landing humans on Mars is still decades away, but it will happen. Humans leaving the Solar System? I'm not sure that will ever happen.
If the political will exists (mainly in developing nuclear fusion propulsion) and spending serious amounts of money then I think we'll see the first manned interstellar mission within a century. Century and a half tops. I really believe if I have grandchildren that they will live to see the day.
I doubt it. Mars in 20-30 years. Moons of Jupiter and Saturn 50-100 years. Interstellar travel? Centuries away, if ever. Nuclear fusion will not do it. Even a modestly-sized crew ship (which presents its own problems) would take decades to reach even the nearest star, and decades to return. And for what? Are we going to haul a lander there so the crew can explore some exo-planet? I think in a few decades time we'll send out some small, fast unmanned probes to other stars. And a couple of decades later, we'll receive data about the solar systems they zoomed through. Your grandchildren will see some amazing things, but they probably won't see humans travelling to other stars. They might see the first probes sent out to the stars, though. Vsauce's take here on the "wait calculation" for interstellar travel is interesting:
I've heard that the "travel time threshhold" for a manned interstellar mission will be the ability to average about 10% of the speed of light. That would of course put the three star Centauri systems in reach in about 45-50 years. I just assumed that at least early interstellar missions would be one way "plant a permanent colony there" efforts. I don't figure round trip interstellar missions will ever become a fact until the ability to reach 50% of light speed is achieved.
I'm not sure we'd even fund a probe for that kind of time. If a probe were going to take 50 years to get there (and 5 years for its signal to get back), then most of the people who would've been in favor of the thing will be dead. Imagine if the Voyager probes were still 10 years away from sending us data...would people have supported sending them back in the early 70s? Think about the difficult and expense of putting a colony on Mars. That's nothing compared to doing so on some exoplanet, even if we lucked out and there was some remotely habitable one nearby. Even at that (and that's a looooong way off), we'd have to figure out how to put people in hibernation for that long. If you put a dozen people in an enclosed space for that long, they're going to go crazy. And, of course, there's the problem of supporting their life functions all that time. Even a small crew would require a very big ship.
I was specifically talking about democratically elected politicians. They think in four- or five-year cycles. They really aren't interested in making sacrifices that might upset their voters, who Want Everything Now. Again I'm talking specifically about the problem of radiation that we're conveniently shielded from by Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. Both Mars' atmosphere and magnetic field are far thinner/weaker than Earth's. And you have to get there first, which means being fried on the way. I haven't heard of any solution to that. That's the route I would go generally. Manned space exploration is one giant Ego Jerk-Off. A hefty dose of valium wouldn't go amiss in this guy's case. Also, we can dismiss everything he says as "Fake Facts". Another take on Fermi's Paradox is that the nature with which evolution has saddled us is at odds with the prodigious powers we're capable of unleashing. The same sort of problem has doubtless culled extraterrestrial civilizations quite sharply. As I think we will be culled one fine day not too far off. So the question isn't how many intelligent civilizations are out there but how many intelligent civilizations are there in possession of the wisdom to safely cross the nuclear etc. thresholds.
A city on Mars? Why would anyone want to live there? Wouldn't it make more sense to spend that money terraforming Mars first? So that we can bring all our plants and animals with us. And if your gonna build some sort of domed city on Mars to keep out the desolate environment, why not just do that in the Sahara desert first? Would be a lot cheaper and easier. The way I look at it, a city on Mars is pointless unless you could make it self sustaining and self sufficient. So terraform the planet first then build up your cities. If by 'city' they just mean a scientific outpost or research station then that makes more sense.
Solar radiation you get warnings of and you can build a "radiation storm shelter" into a spacecraft with your water supply in the walls serving as a very effective radiation shield. Once on Mars the bulk of the planet shields you from cosmic radiation from one direction while putting sandbags of Martian soil on top of your habitat can shield you from the rest. Dr. Robert Zubrin in "The Case for Mars" clearly explained why radiation is far, far from a deal breaker for a manned mission to Mars. At most it slightly increases the astronauts lifetime cancer risk.
That's the problem with really interesting projects, isn't it. They are always being put off to the next generation. A lot can and will happen in the next 100 years. You either do it now or never.
Before we muck up Mars, it would be nice to find out if there is any life there. And there's a probability of Martian life. It could be underground? Perhaps at least a meter deep. Or at the poles? &/or within, perhaps deeply, the volcanoes of Mars? And when it comes to Martian &/or any discovered extraterrestrial life, when that happens, size matters not. Discovering even just ONE MICROBE on Mars would be the most important event in all of history.
