about the Mars thing, we simply HAVE to go somewhere else, anything happens to Earth and we are toast, staying on Earth forever and we will end up the same way as the dinousaurs, whether we do it ourselves (destroy the planet) or a giant rock from the sky lands on us and thats it. We need to be in more than one place.
From what I've read, it takes about 260 days to travel from the earth to mars, that's a long time in a space shuttle.
The isolation, boredom, & whatever else that you & your team will be under is nuts.
Unless NASA builds a faster shuttle to get to mars, say like getting there in 30 days, then I could see people going.
It takes like 3 days to get to the moon & look at all the problems we had before sending man & during.
Im wondering what kind of catastrophes the astronauts would encounter, if any during their mission to Mars.
I don't think it will be done in the next 50 years because the funding is definitely not there & mankind has enough problems on this planet, why go mess up another one......