Man already landed on the Moon long time ago, now it’s time to go somewhere else even further called Mars. This planet is the closest one to us and the only one we can land on too. Yes, Mars is really the only planet we can land on. If you go to Venus, your space ship would melt down after a few minutes because temperatures there reach more than 450ºC and sometimes even more. No satelite ever stays functional for a long time there. On mercury the same thing would happen, since the planet has no atmosphere and is so close to the SUN, the UV Rays and other bad radiations would be able to destroy your space ship and would make all electronic devices stop working… We still have all the other planets far away but no one suits our space ship. On Jupiter you could not land because it has no surface, the planet it all made of gas only.

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Jupiter is a failed star like most scientists say, before you find a hard place to land, you would be on the planet’s core… and you would be melt. On Saturn you would have to land on Ice where the wind blasts at more than 1800 KMH and with a pressure of ten atmospheres so that would be the same of about 180.000 KMH wind blast on earth… Not very hospitable. The other two big ones are made of gas and ice too… not a good place. Pluto is just too far away to reach it on out life time and come back too and with a temperature of -270ºC you would not be able to go to the beach either.

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Mars is the only place where you can go. Now how do you get there? And how long would it take? And what are your chances of survival? Would it be a great history victory?

In 2005 I read in a Portuguese Magazine called Exame Informatica that they are already able to make engines powerful enough to take a space ship or a rocket to mars in just three months. This means that if the engine works like the expect it to work, if you fly today, you will only get there by 14 July. That’s very fast. The actual rockets would take some years to get to there so you can see the evolution. We have the rockets, but do we have enough fuel for it? Sure we have, we can make a rocket bug enough to have enough fuel to take us there and to return as well. The discard technology will start to get rid of the parts that you cannot use anymore. This means that about half of the fuel tank would be disconnected to the rocket and to get back you still had the other half with you. They have been using this technology for a long time.

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Now can you survive for that long inside a rocket? You would need oxygen, food, health care entertainment because the rocket would be on auto pilot for three months, and you would also need a lot of maintenance to the rocket machinery and life support. Can you do this all? Today we know that a boat can live, if I can call it that, on the sea for years, Oxygen is unlimited in supply, well, at least for now, the water supply on the boat is also almost unlimited, they can carry enough food and drinks for decades too and the crew does not have to be that big.

A boat if they wanted to, could be on water for more than 100 years, provided it would not have to face too many strong storms.

Now how about our little space ship?

Oxygen would be somewhat limited but enough for at least one year if they really wanted to, so if something went wrong on the trip you would have more than 100% of the planned time to go there and to come back too.

Clean and drinkable water would probably be the biggest problem. The amount of water the ship could carry would be somewhat limited for so many people for so long. Water would probably use more than half of the ship space and would probably be the heaviest one too. You cannot reuse water in the space ship, you would have to dispose it out of the ship.

Food is very easy to carry for that long, you use much less food in weight and space than water, although the costs in money of it would be way higher.

Health care would be very important as well, in space your cardiovascular system will suffer a great change and only with the deadliest exercises you will survive. People who live out of the earth inside the huge satellites have to exercise at maximum effort for at least an hour a day. If you don’t you WILL die. I am not a doctor I cannot tell you why but that’s what I saw on television in 2006.

You could not use internet in the space because it would take a couple of minutes for the signal to reach the earth!

To entertain yourself you can always carry enough music and computer games for the entire trip.

The best game of all would be the physical exercise like running on a magnetic field with metal shoes. Just my idea.

Now imagine you are just about to land on Mars. The rocket would have to enter on Mars with it’s top down and then with jets it would have to turn it’s “head” to the top and land that way to launch itself to the space again.

In Mars you almost do not have wind. The wind speed is faster than 160 KMH but since it’s atmosphere almost does not have air or gas, you would not be able to feel it. Like I saw in the same channel in my Portuguese television in 2006, “it would take a 160 KMH wind blast to lift up some dust and sand.”

To come back it would be easier because gravity on Mars is not nearly as powerful like on Earth so you would make less effort to launch the rocket in the air.

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The only problem would be the sun wind. Do you feel that air going up when you light up something? The sun has that very same wind, but much more powerful and mighty. Going from the earth would be easier because the wind was with you, now the wind is against you!

This would be the worst part of the trip and you would have to manage the fuel extremely well.

How about joining some people, raise enough money and then engage on this travel?