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Mars Mission Political Feasibility Survey

fabiosau's picture
Why, since the early Space Age, has Mars been stuck on the agenda-setting phase of human spaceflight policy?
To better understand the problem please complete the survey below.
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Please enter here you name, contact info, age, affiliation, and affiliation in the Space arena


A. In order to assess their relative importance of the political feasibility for a manned Mars mission, give a rank from 1 to 13 for the following independent variables. 1 indicates the most important, while 13 indicates the less important.
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For or against a manned Mars mission i.e. human destiny = supporters of a space-faring nation; scientists = supporters of robotic missions for the exploration of the Solar System and the Universe; environmentalists.
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Control of Congress by one political party and degree of support for a major initiative in human spaceflight within each party.
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Available resources, industrial growth, and creation of jobs.
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Events can draw or divert attention from Mars mission: i.e. natural disasters, conflicts, accidents, successful, failed missions, and scientific discoveries.

Mentioned in official documents and mass-media, they are outstanding characters capable to shape public policy with their charisma and technical know-how.
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TV, major newspapers.
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When either the Air Force, Army, or Navy act in support for human spaceflight for strategic reasons.
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NASA Administrator and top level appointees.
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Existence of a serious danger to the nation survival.
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Presidential support or endorsement in speeches and budget requests to Congress.
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Point of reference for the President on scientific research priorities.
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Measured by opinion polls.


B. Tell us how each of the following variables affect the Political Feasibility of a manned mission to Mars.

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Pro or against a manned Mars mission i.e. human destiny = supporters of a space-faring nation; scientists = supporters of robotic missions for the exploration of the Solar System and the Universe; environmentalists.
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Control of Congress by one political party and degree of support for a major initiative in human spaceflight within each party.
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Available resources, industrial growth, and jobs creation.
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Events can draw or divert attention from Mars mission: i.e. natural disasters, conflicts, accidents, successful, failed missions, and scientific discoveries.
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Mentioned in official documents and mass-media, they are outstanding characters capable to shape public policy with their charisma and technical know-how.
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TV, major newspapers.
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When either the Air Force, Army, or Navy act in support for human spaceflight for strategic reasons.
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NASA Administrator and top level appointees
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Existence of a serious danger to the nation survival.
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Majority leaders' position on human spaceflight.
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Presidential support or endorsement in speeches and budget requests to Congress.
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Point of reference for the President on scientific research priorities.
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Measured by opinion polls.


C. Now, given that Political Feasibility of a manned mission to Mars requires all the abovementioned variables to play an active roleplease assign a value to each of the questions related to political feasibility.
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Launch vehicle = payload capacity
Spacecraft = life support systems
Human factor = long duration stay in artificial environments

This survey

Answers given above apply only to USA. They would be different if this were a worldwide survey.

Political Feasibility of Mission to Mars

The answer to surway would be probably the same not only for USA but for the rest of the world also: economical and industrial development, creation of industrial support infra-structure + human factor here on Earth (resource allocation algorithms & technologies) would be crucial for political feasibility of Mission to Mars and back

American Politics and Mars

This study on Political Feasibility of Human Mission to Mars was intentionally American-focused, due to time constraints.
It is clear that other Countries can plan to go to Mars (Russia, China, and the ESA members), either autonomously or together.
Again - though - this study is American politics centered.
Thank you for your highly valued feedback.

applicability

It is almost impossible for what to the US would be "international", "foreign" or "alien" members of the space industry to meaningfully answer this questionnaire, as our perception of the roles and power of e.g. Congress, the President's science advisor, etc. are (thanks to the media) at best tainted and at worst irrelevant.

The set of questions dealing with "likelihood" are unclear - is this seeking space professional real inputs of likelihood, or perceived likelihood given the kinds of factors mentioned?

If the advocacy/interest groups are pro or against - and the survey expressely includes both - the answer to the first part of 'B' has no meaning unless there are specific groups considered.

There is no mention of the value/input/likelihood/impact of the opportunity for international colloboration or competition, which might be considered by many to have more impact than some of the factors discussed.

American Politics and Mars

Once again, this study is focused on the variables that play a significant role in the agenda-setting phase of a major decision in the realm of human spaceflight in the United States of America.

This study is not seeking for international cooperation aspects of a manned mission to Mars, even though one possibility on the table is that several Countries will join forces and resources together for this endeavor.

The goal of this research is not to give extremely specific subdivision on the big family represented by Advocacy or Pressure Groups. The goal is to determine the influence of different factor in establishing the political support for a manned mission to the red planet within the United States.

It is true that this variable encompasses a very broad category. It is not focus of this study to give an extremely detailed account of advocacy groups pro or against human spaceflight.

Survey

I have trouble with the "advocacy group" questions because you are lumping together too many disparate points of view. The planetary society is very supportive of planetary research and at times has been supportive of a manned mars mission. The L-5 society, OTOH, is mainly interested in commercial access to LEO. The scientific community is generally unsupportive of manned missions--particulaly so if those missions are perceived as draining funding from genuinely scientific work. I suggest you modify your survey. --JDR

Political Variables Selection

I do believe it is impossible to satisfy every reader of this survey with a fully exhaustive list of political variables.

I know I am repeating myself, but - while I acknowledge the existence of a universe of different advocacy groups in the spaceflight field - I have to also to remind the people who are graciously taking this online questionnaire that in this specific research I am not investigating in depth all the advocacy groups that have a voice in the American political arena.

This research is about the initial stages of a major political decision in the United States to send and safely return a manned crew to Mars. I invite everybody to read the related research proposal
http://www.uweb.und.nodak.edu/~fabio.sau/Mars%20Mission%20Political%20Feasibility%20Research%20Proposal.doc

Thank you for your feedback as usual.

advocacy

i think you're missing the point of the comments about advocacy groups. its not that the survey lacks subdivisions, its that they can be pro or against space, so the questions are unanswerable: against groups probably wouldn't want to fund a mars mission, planetary society would. but you ask about the likelihood of all groups combined? to what end? we're trying to give you research inputs. you can make it easier, and valid, without changing your scope.

I think Fabio is asking...

...what the net affect of that entire sector is. He is only asking for your best guess, so it should not be too much of a strain.

You are thinking right.

You are thinking right. Thank you.

My 2 cents worth

I think that the US has a monetary shortfall in carrying out the proposed mission to Mars. This is due to a couple of major reasons, 1. War in Iraq, 2. Hurricane damage to New Orleans. The american people will want to concentrate on these two major costly events and vote to reduce the US budget. Our politicans hopefully will bring the budget under control before saying that they want more taxes and budget debt put upon the american people. Old sayin Money talks.
I hope that the Mars Mission will happen, but I doubt that I will live to see it happen.

Money for Mars

I would not underestimate the currently available amount of money for human spaceflight.
During times of peace and prosperity like the ones we are living in the Western World, it is more difficult - but not impossible - to justify the large expenditures that would be likely involved in a major Government-sponsored effort to reach Mars with a manned crew.
Without a major perceived national emergency, the mobilization of resources and manpower has to face competition from other priorities and needs.
This status quo does not mean things cannot change though. American history is full of wake-up calls episodes, where the United States showed quite unique skills in creating industrial infrastructure and new technologies. The same applies to other world players in the space sector.

prospects for developing space access

Since Apollo NASA has deteriorated to a level of impotence that is not recoverable. It needs to be converted to a version of NSA, just to fund other's research or purchase services. Access to space can now only evolve from a graduated growth of private ventures, a working "formula" for which must first be found.

Access to Low Earth Orbit = How to get out of Earth gravity...

Since the Apollo years, nobody had the political courage to give NASA a new bold mission. Thus, NASA had to start competing with other agencies and national priorities in the jungle of federal budget's appropriations.
What happened once can happen again, but definitely there is room to new ways to gain a "easy" access to the Low Earth Orbit environment. From there we can build space hardware and explore options in the exploration of our Solar System.

Mars Missions

We actually have less infrastructure to support a Mars mission now then in the late 1960's/early 1970's at the end of Apollo. then we had a large booster (Saturn V), research was going on in nuclear rockets and its likely one could have operational in time to support a Mars mission, and we had a very experience group of engineers who had practical experience in sending astronauts to the Moon. It won't be until we regenerate that infrastructure with a return to the Moon that we will be ready for Mars.

INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ACCESSING SPACE

There is always a serious risk to lose technological know-how, due to shortsightness and underestimation of national priorities.
It is a fact - for instance - that after 1991, the official end of the Cold War era, the amount of funding for research & development has been constantly shrinking.
The production lines of new Saturn V were stopped almost 2 years before the actual lunar landings, due to the cancellation of the necessary funding by a Congress increasingly hostile to such highly visible expenditures in the federal budget.
The very promising nuclear reactor technologies in NASA shared a similar fate to the one of the powerful Huntsville babe.

Noise in your data...

Fabio,
While I can see some merit in gathering space industry opinion on these matters, I would have to say that I am struggling to contribute meaningfully to your survey. As a European with predominantly second-hand experience of the US political machinery, I do not consider myself to be qualified to respond to your survey which is, as noted by several others, highly specific to the US.

Rather than bulk-mailing members of various online space networks, I feel you should either make your survey more globally accessible or concentrate on those who can add meaningful comment. Any assessment I could make would merely be noise in your data.

Regards,

John Burley
EADS Astrium, Toulouse

NON-AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW

Dear John,

even from outside the American political and societal context, I do believe people like you can give a meaningful assessment in the main topic of this research.
The best account of American politics was given by a non-American: Alexis de Tocqueville. So, I would not be negative on the possibility to provide me with significant insights.

I would not use the term bulk-mailing: I am just using some redundancy in reaching out space experts worldwide, even if there is the risk somebody will find this approach slightly bothering.

Thank you.

response

Fabio,

Personally, I do not take offence to receiving legitimate requests for support such as your email. If I had been, I would not have taken the time to review your questionnaire and subsequently post in this comments section. I was merely suggesting that despite taking a general interest in the US political system I still felt quite unqualified to respond with any degree of conviction. The problem can be rephrased - is it better to get a wild guess as a data point... or no data point at all? Moreover, would you like to receive partially completed questionnaires (in which a participant responds only in areas where they feel they are competent to comment)?

In my opinion, the skill in ‘market research’ comes in devising questions that do not bias the participant, and in knowing how to select participants that will give you a representative set of data. Usually this results in either a general survey open to a broad base of participants, or a focussed survey put to a target group. My concern is that your survey is focussed in subject matter and political context, but open to a broad base through the internet to the international space community.

I wish you every success in your research and hope that you will make your findings available in this site. If you would like to discuss anything in more detail, please feel free to contact me outside of this forum.

Kind regards
John Burley

TOWARDS A FLAWLESS SURVEY

John,

I got all your remarks and they are all very good points.
Of course all the final findings and my attempt of interpretation will be put online as soon as they are available.

The current best proposal for is available here, when you want to have a look at
http://www.uweb.und.nodak.edu/~fabio.sau/Mars%20Mission%20Political%20Feasibility%20Research%20Proposal.doc
It is going to be mainly a qualitative analysis, supported by a set of real numbers. In a sense, I am going to test my qualitative findings from the literature and hopefully some interviews with human spaceflight experts.

Regarding the demographics of this Mars survey and its ability or not to kill bias (THE major problem in any poll of any sort), I am ready to acknowledge that ideally this questionnaire should have been offered only to people with a serious interest in human spaceflight (NASA employees, contractors, politicians with constituencies interested in this economic sector).
Due to mainly time constraints and in spite of a relatively easy access to contact info of an acceptable number of some space professional, it is difficult for me to reach out the abovementioned sample of human spaceflight stakeholders.
It more practical - and I think still acceptable - to open the survey to a broader base of pollees, even though some of them do not have a direct interest or involvement in human spaceflight missions to other planets.
It is true also that an essential ingredient of the human spaceflight recipe is a widespread support from the general public. Therefore, I don't see as a capital sin to ask the inputs from simple space enthusiasts that have no actual decision power on what is politically necessary for a mission to Mars.

Again, the fact that this research is mostly based on a qualitative analysis effort allows me to broad the base of participants, even if such a choice is not healthy for the overall bias.

I do believe though that even a general mild interest in human spaceflight justifies a contribution to this survey.

Finally I want to thank you, John. I will mention your contribution in the final work as convincing and positive criticism on my research effort.

Mars Mission

The timeframes in the final question set are too nearterm. From realistic financial AND technical perspectives, a "human" mission to Mars is extremely unlikley now or in 10 years and barely possible in 20 years - almost the same answer for three questions. We won't make it back to the moon in ten years. Make the timeframe for a Mars mission 30 years and it starts to become more likely.

Dear Bob,the allegedly

Dear Bob,

the allegedly short nearterm questions are mainly due a quite big assumption we made in this study: a mission to Mars is technically feasible.
When Kennedy made the announcement in the 1961 there were several technical issues to address and they were solved pretty quickly.
I take note of your suggestion though.

Life on Mars

I think that a triggering event, like discovering microbial life or fossilized microbial life on Mars would be a huge help. This would bring worlds together and rally support for this important mission.

LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

WE HAVE TO FIND LIFE ON MARS. AGREE 100%

science teaching and learning

It seems to me that if you really want to know which factors effect political decisions, it would make better sense to ask those who are influenced, rather than those who hope to influence. Even then, there must be a more reliable tool than an opinion survey.

As for my opinion: In 1960 the "Space Race" was rightly perceived as a critical battle in the Cold (meaning mostly not violent)War. Therefore it had the mind set and resource commitment of a major military campaign. As soon as it was clear that the decisive battle had been won, the cry to, "Forget about Moon and make jobs for people here on Earth!", caused thousands of people to loose their jobs as the lunar program was truncated.

Since, at least for now, we lack the threat of world dominion by an Evil Empire,I think it not likely that the much greater commitment needed for a man on mars mission will be accepted. (I don't think the terrorists will accept a challenge to a Space Race.)

Kenneth Fuller
Science Can Be Fun, Teaching and Learning

Back Yard Biology

SURVEY TOOLS

Dear Ken,

even if the sample of this survey is inherently small, it is still indicative of some generals feelings and perceptions within space enthusiasts nation and world wide.

The Cold War is no more and the new potential challengers of US leadership are still too distant.

This survey is potentially open to non-space buffs: nothing in the way the questionnaire is set up prevents space enthusiasts and space opponents to express their views. I think - though - it is better the voice to be spread by people more involved in Space than the average Joe.

Thank you for your meaningful comments.

Launch cost remains number one barrier

The main barrier to human settlement of space, including the precurser human exploration of Mars, is the cost of launch to orbit. Government space programs have little incentive to lower this cost, but could encourage commercial industry to do so. A heavy-lift launch vehicle offers the safety and "efficiency" of fewer launches, but a low frequency of launches (a handful every two years) is guaranteed to keep the price high both in terms of production and especially operation. If instead government used medium-lift boosters for their exploration missions, this would add launch demand to an existing commercial market and help drive launch costs down. With enough commercial space business, launch providers could invest in more cost efficient boosters - evoloving towards reusable and reliable systems that would also increase safety. Utilizing space resources for servicing reusable space assets would then make good economic sense and lead to human-tended mining and manufacturing operations on the Moon and eventually Mars. Science alone is not sufficient to sustain a human presence in space, but exploration missions can nurture a commercial industrial base that can lead to a bright future on the frontier.

Heavy-lift or not heavy-lift?

Dear Marianne,

to me the paradigm for heavy lift is still the mighty Saturn V. 180 metric tons in LEO of useful payload and 100% success rate.
The ISS would have been already completed with a couple of Saturn V launches.

Medium lift launchers are not doing very well today with LEO so overcroweded of (redundant) communication and navigation satellites. To be honest, there are not so many launches per year even in this category.

I agree with you in that the technical know to build reliable medium lift should be generally available, but we all witnessed how it is difficult to gain reliability with few launches, even if meticulously prepared, such as the recent unlucky Falcon 1.

Historically, some form of financial help from the government did so good for rocketry. The Germans were capable to achieve a decent rate of success after hundreds of tests and failures.

Today, the most reliable rockets are from Russia, where - for different reasons - the technology and construction techniques has not changed since the 1960s.

Thank you for your feedback.

I personally believe that we

I personally believe that we will not be going to Mars, until the United States puts the Federal Reserve System through bankrupsy re-organization and has setup a Third Nation Bank System. The primary reason that we will not be going is because it too expensive. But once we have a Third National Bank, then I believe it would be it both possible and disierable to go to Mars. Who has control over the creation of credit make that big of a difference as to whether we will be going to Mars. The Federal Reserve System is a private bank that generates credit for other private banks and the credit the create out of thin air is loaned into circulation plus they charge 4% or 5% or what ever prime is of the face value of the credit they generated. But, when the US Government owned the Central Bank and generated the credit, they had first use of it and they could direct where it went and how it was used. Before you think this isn't a big issue, consider the fact that who ever controls the Central Bank will be generating between five hundred billion dollars to one trillion dollars worth of credit each and every year that they own the Central Bank. The reason that that credit has to be generated is the US Economy implod on itself if that credit were not created. Traditionally, when the US Government controled the credit generation, they used it to finance building infrastructure like roads, rail roads, dams, power stations, etc. FDR authorized the Treasury Department to generate credit and used that credit to rebuild America.

So now you might say, what does that have to do with Mars? Well, we have a United State that will have generate between 25 to 50 trillion dollars over a fifty year period. Now that a lot of generated credit that has to be used up either building something or developing new technologies. We will be using that credit to build things like subways system and a whole host of government project. We will also be using some of that credit fanance NASA and a major government that we want them to do for us. We will also be using some of that credit to finance private enterprise too. The only way to really understand what going on and what will really be happening is to just run the numbers out for you. This things is going to get pretty thinghy, but that unavoidable. We are going to be generating one trillion worth of credit per year for fifty years. So now divid up our credit and we will place it where we intend to use it. We divid up our credit into two sections. One portion of our credit goes for government infrastruture built project and the other portion of our credit goes for the productive sector in the private sector. The productive sector of the private sector is the farms, manufacturing and the mining sector. We using our credit to finance more efficient machines to increase productivity of the work force, finance building factories, etc. We are interested in improving productivities so we won't get a run away inflation problem when that money paid to the work force. As long as we keep money supply and productivity of the work force in sink with each, we don't have to worry about the large somes of money we just generated and brought into financial system. Now we turn to the rest of our generated credit. We are going to bust it up into three main section. We going to take about 300 billion per year to build subways, super trains and other such projects and we figure that we will generate 900 billion dollars worth of busines with our 300 billion dollar investment and we intend to use it for twenty to thirty before we have to replace or upgrade it. When you invest money or a farmer sell his crops, that money rolls over three to four time before it leave that community. OK, we can appreciate that, three time three hundred billion will give us the 900 billion worth of business activities the we are looking for. We going to use 100 billion this time and we want a six fold return on our credit. We are looking for a 600 billion dollar return on our investment. We are going to go with NAWAPA and try to get our six fold. NAWAPA is an cranim for North American Water and Power Agreement. NAWAPA was a 50's project that didn't get funded, but would have brought water into the western states and made those states serveral times more projuctive per man hour and redeam the desart lands. The water would be coming from the Yukon and Mackinze river from the far North and pumped down the Rocky Mountain trench. Once you get past the Candian border, you can let the water flow down hill from that point on, because it all down hill from that point on. So now we get our three fold increase for investing and we get a second three fold increase those western lands to produce more wealth. We have 100 billion dollars worth of credit to go. All credit that we used so for was put to good use and we got a good return on it, but we would like slightly higher return on our last 100 billion dollars or credit. Yes, we want a 10 to 20 fold return on our investment. We also wanted as science driver project that will push technology forword for us and double the production capability of the labor force every 25 year for fifty years. We will have invested 5 trillion dollars and we are expecting 50 to 100 trillion dollar return on our investment. To achive all that, we are going to have pick a project just outside our capability to accomplish it, but not too far out of our capability to accomplish it. It will have to be something that we will have to stretch to reach it or we can't hit our target, but where we think we can still do it. Just for the sake of the argument, we decided that a Mars landing isn't going to do what we need to have done in any of things that we wanted to accomplish. So we up the antie a little bit. We want to create one million jobs with our project. We call the people from NASA in and start asking question like what would it take to build city on Mars of 100,000 people. They would say, we don't have the technology nor the infrastructure in place to build city on Mars of a 100,000 in fifty years. We also need a space ship that can excerlarate a one G half way to Mars and decerlarate the other half way to Mars. We don't have the technology to do that either and it would take at least twenty years even if we could. We say, OK so it take twenty years to develop technology to do that, but you do have the technology to get back to the Moon or you could develop it in a relitively short period of time. OK, we want you put a base on the moon of say 1,000 people and manufacturing facilities or skunk workes while your developing the technology for Mars. While we are bread boarding our technology on moon for Mars, we will also assemble the city structures and launch it from there to Mars. We will launch Martian ship from the moon too. Now that we set our goals, we turn to NASA to hand them the hot potato. Assuming that we didn't over estimate what we could do and we hit our target for building that city on Mars. Here what the rest of our targets look like. The Moon Mission return 14 dollars for every 1 spent by the US Government in technological spin off in the private with new products and services. OK, 5 trillion dollars time 14 is 70 trillion dollar. I think we hit our target return and we still have our roll over three time 5 trillion return too for 85 trillion on our investment. Not bad, not bad. With over 100,000 people in space also achieved our create at least one million job goal too. We also would also have achieved our desire to produce twice as much per man hour in every 25 year period, because of the technology that we just had to develop so we could hit our stated goal of putting 100,000 people on Mars in just 50 years time frame.

It reason like this, that the US should engage in large infrasturtural both down here and in space.

Larry,

FAITH IN TECHNOLOGY PROCESS

Dear Larry,

thank you much for your post.

Given the requirements for both energy and payload needs, it really looks like a piloted Mars mission must be a large-scale project with a necessary injection of public money.
While a great preacher and doer of the early space age - Wernher Von Braun - used to say he learned to pronounce the word impossible with the utmost care, it is also fair to say that blind faith in technological progress does not help at all the cause of a manned Mars mission. Too often too many consider as a given technical solutions and innovation that are actually not yet in place.

I believe it is fair to say that to reach Mars, we do need a high payload capacity in LEO or...from the Moon..., an extremely reliable life support system (with some degree of bio-regenerative capabilities), and a certain ability to live off the land on the Red Planet...I believe there are trade-offs among these factors.

My point is that technological feasibility must logically precede the effort to create the necessary political support to fund the overall endeavor.

Once again, thank you for your input and feedback.

Comments on responses

US perspective for responses; other nation's political systems will affect differently.
National Danger only a factor if a newly observed asteroid intercept trajectory results in a

It seems obvious why mars

It seems obvious why man would want to go to Mars. It's the closest planet to Earth that could possibly sustain life. Jupiter is a gas giant with no real firm ground to speak of. Venus is too close to the sun.