How Far Is Mars From Earth

Is Settling Mars Inevitable, Or An Impossibility?

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IRA FLATOW, host: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're not going to the planet Mars anytime soon. President Obama suggested something like the mid-2030s as a target date, but for various reasons - the dangers of space travel, the price tag, more pressing problems on this planet - that trip to the Red Planet has been put on indefinite hold.

My next guest says that's a mistake. We can and should be able to make the trip by 2020, and he says that technology - technologically speaking, we're already closer to being able to send astronauts to Mars than we were to sending men to the moon back in 1961, when President Kennedy made his pronouncement.

But what about all the obstacles: radiation, length of the trip, the lack of gravity during the voyage and all the potential hazards to the astronauts? Robert Zubrin has solutions to every one of these problems, and he's not just thinking about exploratory scientific field trips, he envisions human colonies growing crops in Martian soil, making energy from the atmosphere, even evolving new cultures and dialects.

So what do you think? Would you volunteer as a colonist from Mars? Or are you happy to let NASA's Rovers, the robots, explore the Red Planet? Give us a call. Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. You can tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I. Or you can go to our Facebook page or our website. Our home page is sciencefriday.com.

Robert Zubrin is the author of "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must." He's also president of the Mars Society based in Golden, Colorado. He joins us from the studios of Colorado Public Radio. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Zubrin.

ROBERT ZUBRIN: Thanks for having me.

FLATOW: For all the skeptics out there - and you know there must be a lot of them, I want you to lay out the case of why we should go and overcoming the obstacles I just mentioned. First let me go - maybe I'll tick off the points, and you might be able to answer them. First of all, how about a rocket? Do we need to develop new rocketry to get us there?

ZUBRIN: We need a heavy-lift rocket, comparable to the Saturn 5 that we flew to send astronauts to the moon in the 1960s. We don't have such capability today, but certainly it's within our technology to create one.

Wonderopolis » Blog Archive » How Long Would It Take To Fly To Mars?

It’s Space Day in Wonderopolis! Grab the biggest suitcase you can find. We’re getting ready to head for Mars, and word on the street is that it’s going to be a really, really long trip!

Have you ever wondered…

Did you know?

Are we there yet? That’s the question that makes parents cringe during a trip.

If you’ve ever driven to another state for a vacation, you know that long trips in the car can get a bit boring. After a few hours, you just want to be there already!

If you’re bored by long trips, though, you might not want to be an astronaut. Traveling to outer space requires much more patience than your average trip to the beach.

The United States has sent astronauts to the moon and into orbit around Earth. Many space enthusiasts dream of the day when there will be a manned mission to the “Red Planet” of Mars.

Earth is sometimes referred to as the “third rock from the sun,” which would make Mars the fourth rock from the sun. Even though it’s the next planet over, it’s still a long way away.

Like Earth, Mars revolves around the sun, although on a different path than Earth does. Every 26 months, Mars reaches a point at which it’s as close as it ever gets to Earth.

This point is called “opposition.” At opposition, Mars is 34.6 million miles away.

Thirteen months after opposition, Mars reaches “conjunction,” which means Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the sun and as far away from each other as they can get. At conjunction, Mars is almost 250 million miles from Earth.

Obviously, if you want to travel to Mars, it would be best to do so at the point of opposition, when Mars is “only” nearly 35 million miles away. That is why rocket scientists time their unmanned missions to Mars to coincide with opposition windows every 26 months. The next opposition window will be in November 2011, when NASA plans to launch the Curiosity Rover.

If you dream of one day being an astronaut on the first manned flight to Mars, be prepared for a long trip. Scientists estimate a round-trip to Mars and back would take 400 to 450 days.

Would you be willing to spend more than a year in a spacecraft just to get to Mars and back? You could be saying “Are we there yet?” for months on end! Plus, what would you pack ?

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