I think those are still from the "fish eye" lens of the HAZCAMs. The top picture shows Mount Sharp, or Aeolis Mons, which rises 18,000 feet above Gale Crater, where Curiosity is landed.

Here's the general location of the landing site, just for reference:

http://i.space.com/images/i/14990/i0...jpg?1328135869

Here's a corrected shot of the above shot of Mount Sharp:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wi...ok-660x495.jpg

First color picture. Looks like Phoenix:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...43_946-710.jpg

Here's another shot of Gale Crater showing where Curiosity is located. The crater is ~96 miles wide.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...15686_full.jpg

I don't see that happening. Not unless we get another leader like Kennedy who is committed to it.

Yeah, considering that we can't even fly to the ISS right now, I don't see it happening either.

Might as well color correct the two awesome pics.

http://i.imgur.com/lujeY.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Fzz2Z.jpg

Depends. The first step was to test a landing scenario like this. The next step would to see if they can send something that can actually get back into the atmosphere and return.

Here's my take.

To reach Mars, it would require a voyage of months. Thus, the humans onboard would need living quarters capable of sustaining life (oxygen, water, food, waste disposal, exercise, communication, health care). Since you'd want a minimum of two travelers for redundancy and support, you'd need double the stuff. Now, most spacecraft are only designed for temporary living, but as technology increases and we turn "storage" into "sustainability", it's feasible. The spacecraft would have to have a seperate landing/return vehicle much like the moon trips did. And this ship would be so large and complex that it probably couldn't be built and launched in one piece from Earth; they'd probably have to launch it in stages and assemble it in space, like the ISS, and then when ready give it a "push" out of orbit either by external rockets brought into orbit or by the ship's engines which would be fueled by a transport rocket.

This all sounds very complex, but we've already done a lot of the footwork for this, not only in our space missions but in our undersea missions. What's a nuclear submarine, really, except the difference is that it functions in water and not in zero-gravity? The propulsion system would be a bit different but we're still talking about encapsulated and sustained life (and you hopefully wouldn't need the torpedoes and missiles in space... yet).

The **** we don't. At minimum, a couple arrays of phasers and at least a couple dozen photon torpedo tubes....

Well, I did say "yet". Step One for any phase of humanity has been, "How do we survive?" Step Two is, "How do we kill anyone we don't like?"

Not necessarily. One of the plans over the years had no intention of returning to Earth. It was always envisioned as a one-way trip.

Not to mention a couple of Type 66 Maser Cannons in case of a King Ghidorah encounter.

I think this would be the best idea, especially since you might ****ing die out there anyway.

It's not really the politicians fault. They are not going to sacrifice their careers for science. For a possibility.

It's on us. Look at these threads. There is always someone making a comment about it being wasted money. Until our society agains values science we cant expect politicians to make them.