Boots on Mars! Soon, But Soon Enough? #Mars #explore #science #NASA #tech
The next twenty years promise excitement for Mars lovers. Will Mars One get beyond selling tee-shirts and running bench experiments? Will the Mars Society continue their simulation missions in the Utah Desert and the Canadian Arctic? Will SpaceX send a rocket that can land like Buck Rogers on the Red Planet a mere three years from now? Etcetera, because these aren’t the only organizations with an eye on Mars.
Several governments are sending robotic craft to Mars, but NASA has a long history. Non-profits, private companies, and countries new to space may seem like long-shots, though they sure sound serious.
So what about NASA?
NASA and Lockheed Martin, together with several international partners and private industries, would like to conduct a comprehensive exploration to the hostile planet… Mars Base Camp [will be a] massive central space station made up of two Orions with two science laboratories.”
By 2028, an international crew will orbit Mars in an environment we have a lot of experience with – a space station – controlling remote rovers in real-time on the planet and its two moons. Scientists will be trained to become astronauts, rather than the other way around so, like most of the organizations I mentioned above, the military flavor will be gone.
NASA’s pioneers will return home to Earth and new crews will replace them. Eventually, once we’re convinced there’s no Martian life we could damage, people will set foot on the planet. If we still want to by then, I suppose. Our vision of life on Mars will be clearer by then and, even with advanced technology, it will be a hard life.
NASA won’t land soon enough for many private groups that want to colonize the planet today. There are crews in today training who expect to live and die on Mars.
How I wish I could see a hundred years into the future.
Can’t wait? All my books, including the On Mars series, are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, 
and other major online retailers, including Smashwords for all digital formats and Create Space for paperbacks. On Mars books 1 and 2 are available now, with books 3 and 4 due out this fall. Read one today.
Check out:
http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-journey-to-mars
Thanks to scienceworldreport.com for the quote above.
Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: colonize, colony, Lockheed Martin, mars, Mars One, Mars Society, NASA, Red Planet, science fiction on Mars, SpaceX, when will humans land on Mars
