Like one of the differences of launching from the moon is it’s easier to use things like ION propulsion, which are far more energy efficient than conventional chemical rockets but are presently too weak to use for launching from the Earth.  Along with lots of other possibilities like the energy beaming already mentioned.

So you go be as lost as you want to be.  When all is said and done and we got nothing but a Flag on Mars to show we even tried then you’ll know which was the dumb route and which was the smart one.

It’s basically like the same logic as using a bus versus a hotrod to transport say 30 people.  The Bus may be slower but it can do it one trip while the hotrod will take up to 15 trips and wind up wasting more resources than the bus would have.

I’ve made it abundantly clear why going to the moon first would be smarter, it gives us resources and options we don’t have now.  It expands our capabilities and options.

Helium-3 is the future, the other elements mentioned in that article are our present.  We can make air and rocket fuel on the moon.  Along with other options like solar power plants, which would also lessen Earth’s need for fossil fuel as well as make it easier to launch vessels both from Earth and into deep space.

But no one can change you’re opinion if you insist on being short sighted and seeing nothing but the end goal.

The 3 rockets proposal is just using the Heavy-lift rocket that Space X has announced to be building. If we prefer to use a bigger $4 Billion heavy-lift that Lockheed can build, then they can carry double as much to the Martian surface.

Going to the Moon first is not the smarter way. We can go back to the moon for sure, but it’s going to be a side-project to the main mission which is to get to Mars as soon as possible. Helium-3 science sounds great, but that has nothing to do with what we need to get to Mars.

For Apollo, no we got there with careful planning and not rushing.  We didn’t go straight to the moon, and nether should be going straight to Mars.  The distance is far greater, the danger and risks far more than what we risked going to the moon, and we aren’t in the same financial situation as when we went to the moon.

Going to moon first won’t change that Mars is the final goal, it’s just the smarter way to do it.

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/52144-moons-resources-could-sustain-human-base

And when we finally develop fusion, the Moon has by some estimates a million tons of helium-3 and just 25 tons is all that would be needed to power the world for a year.

Ultimately we will want to colonize Mars but we can’t do that if we waste all our resources before we are ready to start terraforming and making permanent structures on Mars to live in…

11 tons is also a pretty tiny amount of mass when you factor all what the astronauts will need to live and to protect them on the trip for a 1000 days to 5 years.

According to the FDA the average person eats about 1,500 pounds of food per year.  So for 4 people 5 years that comes to about 15 tons.  Even with recycling that still has to account for the air recycling, water, life support equipment, power systems, radiation shielding, exercise equipment, medical equipment, spare parts for repairs, tools, actual capacity to collect materials from Mars for the return trip, entertainment systems to keep their minds occupied, etc.  All add to the needed mass and space.

The ISS shows much of these equipments aren’t ready to be relied on for such long trips.  Everything from recycling equipment to the zero g toilets have failed on the ISS and needed to be replaced.  They couldn’t fix all of the failures without getting replacement parts from Earth.  Something that isn’t possible with a Mars mission and that would be as good as a death sentence to them.

Apollo astronauts got to walk on the moon not because we decided we needed to build the Saturn 5 rocket. We built the Saturn 5 rocket because we set for ourselves a goal to send Humans to the Moon before the end of that decade, 5 decades ago. We should set ourselves the big goal to send Humans to Mars within 5 years, that will lead us to build all the technologies required to make that work successfully.

Rushing also won’t change anything, we’ll need more resources to continue sending missions back and forth and we need to start tapping resources besides what are on Earth.  Putting all the energy requirements on just Mars and Earth means we will pollute this planet faster and further reduce the time we have to make real changes.

Also going with present technology is not bothering to develop the new technology that can help us.  You’ll be putting resources that could be placed on R&D into just providing the materials and energy needed to reach Mars as quickly as possible.

You fail to learn the lessons of history, when we went to the moon we went in phases.  Each step took us closer to getting the moon but they were needed to ensure the mission would work and to develop better technology for the final step.

Pie in the sky dreams aren’t going to get us to Mars, it’ll be hard work and careful planning and that can’t be rushed without cutting corners.

SpaceX’s Falcon-9 Heavy rocket will have a launch capacity of 53 metric tons to low Earth orbit. This means that if a conventional hydrogen-oxygen chemical rocket upper stage were added, it could send 17.5 tons on a trajectory to Mars, placing 14 tons in Mars orbit, or landing 11 tons on the Martian surface.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHhp1aLiSio

Thousands of Astronauts have been to Space. Of the 12 Astronauts that walked on the moon, most are still alive and well, even as they are over 80 years old. Sure space weightlessness is not what our bodies have been designed for. But who cares if a few Astronauts get slightly weaker bones out of the trip. They can retrain their muscles once they are back.

Are you seriously talking about dwindling resources? Excuse me, but we’ve got still enough propellant on earth to power a billion Heavy-lift rockets on their way to Mars before we have to start considering using other renewable propellant technologies.

What we are sacrificing by delaying our first travels of Humans to Mars is that 7 billion people on this earth have to wait longer for Humanity to gain more knowledge about the Universe, everyone has to wait to get their Governments to prioritize on science and technology like we did during the Apollo era with all the benefit to society that brought. 

We are putting millions of lives in danger on earth by building nuclear plants that can fail close to heavily populated areas, we pollute our big cities and force everyone living in them to breathe polluted air leading to all sorts of disease. And you think we should instead worry about the safety of a couple dozen of the first courageous Astronauts that volunteer to be the first Humans to Mars? Sure, project planners will focus on those Astronauts safety, that is the main technological challenge at its core. And all the technological tools we will invent for this mission, such as recycled water, food, air, sustainability, surviving with few resources, new clever use of available resources, all those advances for this Mission to Mars can also be used to prevent global warming here on earth, again a positive side-effect.

The Earth return vehicle doesn’t idea btw, doesn’t work, it would need both the fuel to send the vehicle there and for the return trip.  Only thing that makes sense is either sending equipment to create fuel from Mars or take that equipment along with the mission and further add to what needs to be carried to Mars and the fuel requirements for that one trip go up, which further puts the mission at risk.

So yes, we can go to Mars now if we wanted, but the astronauts aren’t likely to survive the whole trip and even if they do their lives will probably be shortened.

Everything needed for the trip will also take space, space in turn means more mass as volume is increased.  Since the weight of an object increases as the cube of the scale factor.  All of which also factors into the structural integrity of the ship and how much stress it will be put under at launch.

Sure, they can couple a couple of rockets together and scale accordingly but increased complexity = increased number of things that can go wrong.

Never mind you’re also still ignoring the fact there is increased risk once a ship goes beyond Earth orbit.  Denial is not an argument!

Radiation exposure in outer space is hundreds of times more intense than on Earth.  Even on Mars the astronauts won’t be protected like we are on Earth.  So we’re talking years of high level exposure for the whole trip.

Even with the relative safety of still being in Earth orbit, but already studies of astronauts who spent months orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station show some are 2 1/2 times as likely to develop cataracts and that’ll be far worse during the trip to and back from Mars.  Never mind other ailments that the radiation can cause or make worse and the risk to women are double that of men.

And all that is assuming the ship never gets hit by one of the many random radiation burst that would increase their exposure far more. Or risks that a meteors and other objects hitting the ship along the way and causing critical damage.  They would be limited to resource they carried with them to make any repairs.

So after all that I can only conclude aren’t concerned for the environment, our dwindling resources, the sustainability of continued missions, or what the astronauts going to Mars would have to sacrifice.  So long as we get to Mars!

On earth we have millions of people that spend years in small prison cells, you want to talk about the psychological risks of isolation? Trained astronauts want the challenge and you even have experiments going on on earth with small crews being put in isolation for years to test whatever they need to test.

Water recycling, food recycling, those things are challenges for sure, but it can be done. Suggesting that it’s impossible is not reasonable. The astronauts can build hydroponic growth labs where vegetables can be grown. These crops will provide the crew with added nutrition and variety. Also, they only really need food and water for the 6 months trip towards Mars, as it costs peanuts to send with them at the same time, with other heavy-lift rockets, at least the earth-return vehicle, but why not also just a couple more components that they will land close by and use to build their Mars base.

I’m not against going back to the Moon, I just think it is completely ridiculous that we somehow need to delay going to Mars just so we can go to the moon again first. We should do both at the same time. But one thing is for sure, we don’t need to go to the moon to launch stuff further into space. That is for sure at least not before we somehow think we need to build some gigantic Star Wars sized space ship to travel to Jupiter and Saturn or to some other galaxies. But we’re not there yet. And basically, it’s ridiculous to think in Star Wars scenarios for a Mars mission, the capsules and spaceships needed to get to Mars do not need to be much bigger than the Apollo capsules that went to the Moon 40 years ago.

Problem with many estimates is they work under the assumption that nothing goes wrong.  But reality is actual costs usually go well beyond the estimates.  While dwindling resources means costs go up from what the estimates were based on, especially if the mission takes longer to accomplish than planned.

Though it would help to cut the bureaucracy that organizations like NASA are hampered by and get private sector seriously involved and costs can be knocked down considerably but it’ll still cost a lot just to reach Mars, let alone make it so it won’t be a one way trip.

Next, you’re ignoring the fact Earth doesn’t have unlimited resources and even if going to the moon cost a little more energy, we gain far more by adding the resources of the moon to the mission and provide a safer launching point second only to launching from a orbital platform but that has the negative factor of putting all resources on the Earth.  Never mind dealing with space junk.  Harder to construct large structures in essentially freefall zero G. And it’s harder to do a slingshot maneuver from either the Earth or from Earth Orbit, versus from the moon, which can then leverage the Earth gravity to help accelerate to escape velocity.  Just the highlight some of the differences.

The problem with Robert Zubrin is he’s basically a dreamer, who even tends to talk about himself in the 3rd person from time to time.  He wants us to go to Mars right away, he’s even considered one way trips in which no one comes back.  So practicality only matters to him so much as being able to get from point A to point B.  But he makes little to no considerations on the ramifications.

A lot can go wrong with a rocket launch, especially when you start getting into the tonnage range that would be required to even make a manned mission to Mars anything but a suicide mission.  Launching all of it from the Earth just increases those risks.  Versus the moon reducing those risks with its 1/8 gravity.

The requirements to keep each astronaut alive for the whole mission are also quite large.  Not even the ISS is equipped to survive years without resupply deliveries.  So try to imagine how immense the amount of food, water, and air that would be needed.  Even with recycling resources will be lost during the course of the mission.  Never mind those resources also have to be protected from radiation. 

Add the living conditions have to allow the astronauts to stay healthy and not go mad from isolation.  Even when they get to Mars they can never be out in the open without a space suit.  All for a mission length greater than any human has yet stayed in space continuously.  Versus how confining we would have to make it if we had to launch them from the Earth.

While the only thing more practical on resources than using the moon would be a space elevator, since it would need a fraction of the energy to send materials into space, but we don’t yet have the technology or resources to built one.

Then there is solar energy, it would be far more practical to establish solar energy plant on the moon and use lasers or microwaves to beam that energy to the Earth to make it easier to launch ships and for eventual missions to mars.

I can go on for quite a bit but I hope you get the point by now…

The radiation problem can easily be fixed by modern technology. Just make it one of the technological challenges that budget needs to be spent on, together with oxygen recycling, water recycling, food recycling and other challenges. We can complete this research for a Humans to Mars launch just using the existing NASA, ESA, Russian/Chinese/Indian/Brazilian/Japanese budgets within 5 years. It’s only a question of prioritization, we can basically also forget about the ISS and just focus on sending Humans to Mars at the next earth to Mars opportunity.

This decade I would love to see two achievements : space elevators and commercial nuclear fusion energy.

The actual fuel needed to send Humans to Mars does not cost a fortune, we spend tens of thousands of times that amount of fuel each day for our commercial airplanes. And the actual building of those spaceships for sending Humans to Mars, those are same materials we would have previously used building the relatively useless waste of time and money that was the Space Shuttle. Now that the Space Shuttle is finally being cancelled, we should invest at least a part of that budget into building the heavy-lift and spaceships required to go to Mars, no further increase in current space budget is even needed!

The actual cost to society of not evolving faster through a development of a Humans to Mars project, that cost is much much greater than the difference of cost between sending a few more robotic missions and totally delaying the humans to mars project.

The delta-v velocity changes to go from low earth orbit to the moon are actually greater than the one needed to go to the surface of Mars, which basically means it requires MORE FUEL to go to the Moon than to the surface of Mars, which actually means, it actually costs more (in terms of fuel) to go back to the Moon than to go directly to Mars.

One heavy-lift rocket can send a crew of 4 to 6 directly to Mars. The return trip vehicle is sent unmanned at the same time. Thus it is not further adding to the mass of the Earth-to-Mars manned space ship, it is not making the trip even more impractical. You send 2 spaceships up to Mars at the same time. One with the fuel to get there and land, and one unmanned, with Hydrogen and some more extra foods, water, oxygen, that would land close to the manned vehicle and would suck Methane from the Martian atmosphere, mix it with Hydrogen, and thus automatically create enough fuel on Mars to be able to send the Astronauts back to eartch 1.5 years after they have landed with the other spaceship.

The Mars Mission is Research and Development. It’s an investment in our future. It’s like investing in education, science, engineering, and a very important mission, all at the same time. It is exactly the main thing that our Governments should be investing in, the only true valuable thing to invest in with our borrowed debt money.

Do you know why Scandinavian pensions are in danger? Because the American banks basically robbed the wealth from pension funds and villages, by means of their scam tricks.

Over here is an explanation:

http://www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/

The only cause of pension being in danger, is because of the banks! Only if the scam-banks go bankrupt, or pension-funds stop to trust them with our wealth, our pension will be save.

I don’t agree: “Monopoly money” – the nonsense-money created ‘out of nothing’ – is almost free. That’s why LinkedIn and gold are so expensive on the stock markets: The US government created ubiquitous money out of nothing. So, no real wealth was involved!

Say, play the game ‘Monopoly’. You are the bank, lend some houses, but the user can’t pay the rent (or mortgage; it’s just another way of renting) anymore. Therefore, many houses are left by their users, house prices decline, and so does your ‘equity’ on your balance sheet. So what do you do? Just start your HP printer, print some new bank notes, hand them over to anybody, and use that bank notes to compensate what you just lost. You see, no ‘real wealth’ involved at all. Bailing out the bank – in terms of wealth – is pretty much ‘for free’. All that bank notes you handed out, have to go somewhere. So what do the other players in the Monopoly game do? Right: Buy gold, buy LinkedIn shares, AAPL shares, buy ‘gamble contracts’ the oil price is going up (and therefore it will!), and so on.

However, you can’t pay a ‘rocket to Mars’ with just money; it will get you nowhere! For a rocket to Mars, you have to pay with ‘real’ wealth; you can’t buy it with credit! Like: “We send a rocket to Mars, and we’ll do the research later’. The latter is the manner in which money is created: “We create money, and we’ll back it up with real world wealth later”.

You need real fuel, metal, training, R&D and so on for a rocket. Both LinkedIn and AAPL (and the goldprice) is based purely on ‘monopoly money’, it’s not worth anything. It’s ‘paper’ printed out and owned by people, and they hope one day AAPL / LinkedIn will back up their ‘worthless’ paper by any ‘real world wealth’. If no real wealth is substituted, one day hyperinflation will happen. What this basically says, is $5 Billion is probably more equal to $15 Billion or so, but the “inflation” which ought to happen is delayed by tons of accounting tricks by the scams like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase et. all.

Since the moon is closer it’s gravity will help in sending of materials over to it past the halfway mark and like I pointed out earlier it’s easier to slingshot a ship from the moon, using the Earth’s gravity to help it along instead of resisting Earth gravity all the way to escape velocity under its own power. Never mind the increase mass of fuel also means more fuel is needed for the increased mass and that puts stricter restrictions on the mass of the vessel that finally gets to Mars.

You’re crazy if you think Radiation is a piece of cake to handle and you must have skipped the part where I pointed out that past Earth’s magnetic field the astronauts would face far more radiation than they would even in Earth orbit.

The fuel that can be acquired from Mars also only applies, as I stated before, for the return trip.  Ignoring the fact the equipment needed to make the fuel would either have to be taken along with them, further adding to mass, or already on Mars for them to use.  Otherwise the only other solution is to take the return trip fuel with them and that makes the trip even more impractical. 

While launching from the Moon effects the beginning of the trip to Mars and reduces the amount of fuel needed by over 8 times because of the 1/8th lesser gravity and easier option to use the Earth in a slingshot maneuver to further reduce the fuel requirements.

So sorry but science, or at least physics, are obviously not your strong suite.

Again, if we spend thousands of billions on corrupt banks, on useless wars, we can afford anything, especially investments in science, engineering, research, which is exactly what a Human to Mars mission is. There is no better and surer way to make your money back several times over than to invest in R&D, everyone knows that.

The spaceship and heavy-lift required to launch Humans towards Mars is the same size as the one to go back to the moon. Basically it costs about the same to do either mission.

Radiation is a piece of cake. Several Russian Cosmonauts have spent more than 2 years combined in Space. They are perfectly healthy today. And we now know of technological ways to block radiation which were not even built into the Mir space station. For example, just put a thin layer of water inside the walls of the space ship and you’ve blocked most radiation.

Mars likely has many more natural resources that can be mined than on the moon. Not just to mine and want to bring back to earth, but mined and used by the Astronauts on the surface of the planet itself. For example Mars has oceans of water frozen into its soil as ice and permafrost, as well as vast quantities of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, all in forms readily accessible to those clever enough to use them. These four elements are the basic stuff not only of food and water, but of plastics, wood, paper, clothing—and most importantly, rocket fuel. In addition, Mars has experienced the same sorts of volcanic and hydrologic processes that produced a multitude of mineral ores on Earth. Virtually every element of significant interest to industry is known to exist on the Red Planet.

It’s just wrong to consider sending more space ships at the same time requires more fuel, each space ship with crew of 4-6 astronauts and each empty earth-return vehicle requires the same heavy-lift rocket, the same type Space X says they can build within a couple years and launch perhaps for as little as $80 Million per rocket. Even if it cost several hundred million to launch it, or let’s say even if it cost $1 Billion per heavy-lift rocket, it’s still worth it to just send several space ships up there at the same time, several crews at the same time and for each crew one unmanned earth-return vehicle. Duplicating the production of those space ships also lowers the cost of each. 

You also are completely wrong on the moon, 1/8th gravity means it will take far less energy to launch a vessel from there than directly from the Earth.  The biggest hurdle is gravity and why it cost so much to send up of anything of significant mass into space.  Like it’s why most of the mass of a rocket that even only goes into low orbit is rocket fuel to overcome gravity.

Additionally fuel can actually be mined from the moon, we have discovered resources which we an tap if a permanent base is built there and we can also then use the Earth’s gravity to help slingshot a vessel launched from the moon to help further reduce the fuel requirements of sending a ship to Mars.

It’s launching directly from the Earth that makes less sense!

The cosmonaut with the longest record in space goes to Valeri Polyakov at 437 days 18 hours, no other comes close to spending 2 years in space.  Non-continuously doesn’t count because then they have time to recover.  So fact is that none of them were completely fine after anywhere to longer than 6 months in space.  They suffered significant bone loss and even after their return they continued bone degradation for some time before their body’s finally re-adapted and recovered. So there is still much R&D needed to better preserve the strength of bones for such long periods.

The biggest concern though is radiation, only now is any significant progress been made at creating radiation shields, which would greatly reduce the mass needed to help protect the astronauts.  Since unlike Earth, there is no natural EM shield in space and Mars doesn’t have a significant magnetic field either.  So astronauts going to Mars would be faced with potential exposed to even more radiation than they would be in an orbiting space station.

While sending several ships to Mars doesn’t solve much as it also means they will need more food, more water, more air, and all of that takes up more mass for them to carry to Mars and that means more mass needed for fuel just to launch the mission. 

The return trip may be easier if they can tap local resources but the trip there is still cost prohibitive and a lot harder to pull off with existing technology.  Never mind the 8 times difference in gravity that has to be over come if launched directly from the Earth.

Sure, you can find volunteers for just about anything but it makes more sense to go in steps and make the trip a little more practical.  Even when we went to the moon, we didn’t just go to the moon.  We went in steps and didn’t go to the moon until we were ready and more than reasonably sure it wouldn’t be a one way trip.

“There is no we, without I.”

It costs about the same to send a crew of humans to Mars as to sending some back to the Moon. I say we need to make Mars the first priority, but we can also at the same time send Astronauts back to the moon. And it makes no sense to try to launch from the moon to Mars, that requires more energy than to just launch directly from earth on that trajectory towards Mars, which is every 2.5 years, .5 years to travel each way and 1.5 years the Astronauts have to stay on Mars waiting for their next opportunity to fly back.

About the time in space, there has been a couple or more Russian cosmonauts who have already spent more than 2 years in space on the Mir and ISS space stations and they are fine.

As for safety, the best solution is to send several spaceships at the same time. Each on one Space X heavy-lift. For every 4-person crew we send an Earth-return vehicle, which contains a bit of hydrogen that it mixes with the methane from the Marsian atmosphere to generate all the fuel needed to lift it off from Mars back to earth. And the other best way is to send several crews towards Mars at the same time and have them land on Mars not so far from each other so they can walk or take a Mars rover from one to the next base. Just ask candidate astronauts today if they would want to risk it, you’ll find plenty of volunteers wanting to fly to Mars as soon as possible, even if it means they have to stay away for 2.5 years, even if it’s dangerous.

Besides, I think it more logical to first establish a permanent Moon Base.  So we can mine resources and use the lower gravity environment to reduce the resources needs to launch a mission to Mars.

Plus by the time that is established we should have more reliable technology that will make a manned mission more practical and safer.  Remember anyone sent on a mission to Mars would have to wait months to years for a rescue mission if anything goes wrong!  Not to mention we would have to wait for when Mars and Earth are relatively close to each other to keep travel times reasonable…

I love your idea for reality TV helping to pay for it though    Would probably be the only reality TV show I would ever bother watching.

Another issue though is for the human race to survive, long term, we eventually have to spread to other worlds because no matter what the Earth won’t always be livable.  Whether we do it, or natural disaster, or comet, or meteor, etc. The only sure way to ensure we don’t get wiped out is to spread out.  So besides the scientific and financial implications, there is ultimately a very practical reason why we should continue to push into space…

Besides, I think it more logical to first establish a permanent Moon Base.  So we can mine resources and use the lower gravity environment to reduce the resources needs to launch a mission to Mars.

Plus by the time that is established we should have more reliable technology that will make a manned mission more practical and safer.  Remember anyone sent on a mission to Mars would have to wait months to years for a rescue mission if anything goes wrong!  Not to mention we would have to wait for when Mars and Earth are relatively close to each other to keep travel times reasonable…

I love your idea for reality TV helping to pay for it though    Would probably be the only reality TV show I would ever bother watching.

Another issue though is for the human race to survive, long term, we eventually have to spread to other worlds because no matter what the Earth won’t always be livable.  Whether we do it, or natural disaster, or comet, or meteor, etc. The only sure way to ensure we don’t get wiped out is to spread out.  So besides the scientific and financial implications, there is ultimately a very practical reason why we should continue to push into space…

A mission to Mars is also taken very seriously by the world’s governments.  Recently and maybe still ongoing is a simulation of astronauts living in a spacecraft for the time that it will take to get to Mars, I believe it is being done in Russia.  

Hopefully within the next 10 years it will happen.

P.S. Hey Charbax are you going to Computex this year?

The Apollo missions did not just send 24 Astronauts to the Moon. It created the conditions for millions of Americans to become scientists, engineers, they built the status of current US Universities which are ranked as top universities in the world. Just about 100% of all the enterpreneurs who started all the top Silicon Valley companies of today are in this field because they got inspired by the Apollo programme. The quality of our current Boeing and Airbus jet airplanes all come from that era of rapid technological innovation. Even the Internet, the CERN where the web was born, all are direct descendants of the Apollo project.

As for the direct scientific reasoning for sending Humans to Mars, that is a different topic. I believe the reason for doing that is to help try to answer the most important question in the world and that is Why and How is Life, why are we here. You can discard the reasoning towards doing everything we can to try to find more answers to that question as “just useless”. It’s like discarding everything scientists do in a sense, discarding Physics, Astronomy, etc. You should consider that every dollar spent on the most advanced scientific research, might not show return on investment immediately, but you get at least 1000x times your money back in the long term. It’s only by doing such big projects that we really do advance our society, it may be considered to be happening as a side-effect. Another way to look at it is to consider that not every child today, future important inventors, engineers are initially motivated only by idea of making instant profit.

So in terms of “waste of money”, it can be argued that just considering the Humans to Mars mission a great potential for a reality TV show that could last over more than 3 years (considering preparations, eventual “casting”, training, then launch (6 months), stay on Mars (18 months) and trip back (6 month), and that we can afford sending several crews of 4 to 6 Astronauts up there at the same time. Just in terms of potential advertising revenues from this Reality TV Show, Mission to Mars, there is ample case to make that the money can be recouped just through the worldwide TV advertising opportunity of this project.

Robots are not bad. But there is no way a robot can find fossils or other proof of previous life if that possible life on Mars has been gone for billions of years. You can only find those things by sending actual specialists up there and have them work combing the whole planet for months, even years.

It’s like suggesting that Aliens could understand everything about our planet the earth by just sending two rover robots at two random places and have a couple satellites taking high resolution pictures. That’s not how you really understand a new world.