• Question: in what year do you think human life will be settled on Mars (if water is findable there)?

    Asked by alpacasmurf to Nick, Lilly, Alan on 12 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      I don’t know! Right now we don’t even know when the first astronauts will be sent to Mars, except that it will probably be sometime in the 2030’s. They will probably stay for a few weeks or some months but then return. Settling on Mars to live there permanently is a much harder thing to do, and it won’t be for many years.

    • Photo: Lilian Hunt

      Lilian Hunt answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      No idea what year! But I have read that we are planning missions to Mars so Alan’s estimate of the 2030’s for a trip there sounds about right! Settling on Mars would mean we would need to understand a lot more about the conditions there, plus we’d need a supply of oxygen to breathe there!

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I think the first year we will land on Mars will probably be in the 2030s or 2040s, because its a very complex and expensive mission and it might require a large collaboration between different countries. But I don’t think we will immediately settle there for a long time, it will probably just be a visit. We might have to wait many years to settle on Mars, for example we first landed on the moon over 50 years ago, but we haven’t been back and we haven’t settled there yet! These things can take a very long time unfortunately.

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