I'm not 100% sure of this, but I don't think space works that way. Everything is whizzing around at insane speeds and spinning up there: bases don't just sit conveniently halfway between us and Mars.
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The reason space trips are always following a set schedule or are put of hold for a year or more is because they want Earth and whatever they're trying to get to to be as close as possible. Otherwise Earth and Mars could very well be on opposite sides of the sun at some point in time.
There are millions of people who live in and around the Gobi. Antarctica would have been a better comparison but it has more life than you can shake a stick at.
The environment there is irrelevant. We set foot upon the Moon which is 250F in the sun and -100C in the shade with absolutely zero natural protection from the cosmos' most powerful killers like radiation and meteorites. What makes you think Mars is less hospitable than that?
Easy solution:
1) get a bunch of gamers
2) install World Of Warcraft in the P Cs on board.
Trouble now is how to get them off the craft when they arrive...
Rig the P Cs to explode once they've landed.
'80s TV Action Hero
Yeah, but do we really want to send what will basically be a cargo ship filled with cheese-snack-monsters as our first try?
Scientists might be better. And soldiers, because you never know.
Mars is only a year or so away and then you can build your nice big base. Well, biggish. Well, pokey.
Maybe we should send submariners? They like that sort of thing. If we devote a suitable portion of supply tonnage to booze they won't care where they're going.
edited 8th Jul '12 3:58:19 PM by InverurieJones
'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'
I wholeheartedly support sending people to mars as long as their efforts to dig up ancient life don't result in the opening of a portal to the underworld
. Furthermore, everyone on the mission will be required to bring at least three rolls of duct tape. All joking aside though, a manned mission to mars is something I would love to see in my lifetime. Having actual astronauts up there would allow for far more discoveries to be made than it's possible to have just using robots.
'80s TV Action Hero
I would love to be on that ship, but I'm far too outdoorsy. I'd probably do a Dern halfway out.
'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'
That's what makes the risks and expenditures worth it. We learned more about the Moon in 6 landings with men than most of the following 40 years after that. The same will happen to Mars and everywhere else in the cosmos.
People are far superior explorers than any robot.
We'll be teaching aliens how to play World Of Warcraft? HELL YES!
Fund it with reality TV.
Fresh-eyed movie blog
Is that cake frosting?
And I am less than convinced that we learned more about the Moon during the manned missions than during the unmanned ones. I'd rather say that the opposite is true.
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Then when will it be? Oh I know the answer: Yesterday.
Is that cake frosting?
Yesterday was definitely not a very convenient day to go on Mars. As for when it will become economically convenient... well, it depends on a bunch of issues (technological progress, current economical situation, what could humans do once they get there...), and I am not going to attempt a prediction.
I am also confident that humans will reach Mars within our lifetimes; but I am also quite confident that that will not happen in the next ten years. I might be wrong, obviously.
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Setting up a colony on Mars would be great.
I vowed, and so did you: Beyond this wall- we would make it through.
Is that cake frosting?
Why?
I mean, I am into science fiction too; but what advantages would it give us?
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.Survival. Colonization of space is essential for it.
I vowed, and so did you: Beyond this wall- we would make it through.
Venom Awakens
The important thing would be to drop the basic construction and mining equipment before the people. Once you get the base set up, you can start manufacturing things locally, which is a hell of a lot faster and cheaper.
Standing on the edge of the crater...
Any sort of populated settlement on Mars isn't on the radar until we build some kind of robot that can reliably construct a secure, habitable base for colonists to live in with Earth-like gravity and atmosphere. See, you can't just leap out of a spaceship and start work on an enormous and complicated construction project while wearing a bulky spacesuit on a planet with a low level of gravity that's prone to deadly, apocalyptic dust storms.
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)
@Ten tails: Its kind of annoying how people cling on futuristic cool sounding possible future scifi technologies as something that "Needs to happen" 
Nobody ever says "Figuring out good way to control population and still have follow human rights is essential for ethical way of continuing existence of human race" or something like that
KVLFON
This actually has been proposed, perhaps not in this exact form, but one of NASA's ideas for a return to Moon was to involve the media in it. Moon's close, one could make almost-live shows on the Moon, footage of the experiments, interviews with the cosmonauts and so on.
"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"
Sneering Imperialist
So, how 'bout that He-3 mining?
I admittedly know pretty much nothing about the subject, but I have seen it suggested that once He-3 mining operations were set up, space flight would get cheaper and cheaper after the initial astronomical investment in a feedback loop.
Is this utterly and hilariously wrong?
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.
That sounds rather too late now, given we need resources of three earths for every person to have the living standards of US.
Clearly we need to stop breeding and wait till population number is better or simply use less resources
No seriously, people ARE too wasteful Not sure how wasting other planet's resources is going to fix anything permanently
edited 9th Jul '12 8:25:31 PM by SpookyMask
Who says you have to go to Mars in one big gulp? Why not set up a small chain of space stations, built by automated ships and robots and use them to island hop to Mars.
Worked for the US Marines and US Army on their way to a similarly hostile and deadly environment in Big Mistake Number 2 after all.