Why haven't we sent a spaceship filled with people to possible habitable planets??

[crayzkirk]

Originally Posted by Basileus777

Mars lack of magnetic field means it would require insane technological leaps for it to ever be really inhabitable. Going to Mars is really just a vanity project. There is nothing there that is actually valuable to humanity. They'd be better off just building more space telescopes than doing manned missions.

Agreed. Might as well setup a base on the Moon so missions don't have to expend so much fuel escaping Earth's gravity well. There's not much of an atmosphere on Mars, limited gravity, poisonous soil, dust storms, yada, yada, yada.

Mine the asteroid field for resources. At some point, if humans don't destroy themselves, we will need to find a world to expand to. Our technology and understanding of the universe just seem too limited at this point in our evolution.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by crayzkirk

Agreed. Might as well setup a base on the Moon so missions don't have to expend so much fuel escaping Earth's gravity well. There's not much of an atmosphere on Mars, limited gravity, poisonous soil, dust storms, yada, yada, yada.

Mine the asteroid field for resources. At some point, if humans don't destroy themselves, we will need to find a world to expand to. Our technology and understanding of the universe just seem too limited at this point in our evolution.

If we have to build a whole community on Mars indoors because the environment is hostile to our frail bodies. Why not just do that on earth when we **** up our environment?

These billionaires can have their vanity projects. Just quit asking for taxpayer dollars to fund your vanity. Living on Mars is not happening anytime soon/

[ghak99]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

If we have to build a whole community on Mars indoors because the environment is hostile to our frail bodies. Why not just do that on earth when we **** up our environment?

These billionaires can have their vanity projects. Just quit asking for taxpayer dollars to fund your vanity. Living on Mars is not happening anytime soon/

It's not rocket surgery.

If an astroid hits earth, we're ****ed.

If an astroid hits earth while there are people living on mars, there's a chance they could eventually repopulate earth.

[Megatron96]

Originally Posted by crayzkirk

Agreed. Might as well setup a base on the Moon so missions don't have to expend so much fuel escaping Earth's gravity well. There's not much of an atmosphere on Mars, limited gravity, poisonous soil, dust storms, yada, yada, yada.

Mine the asteroid field for resources. At some point, if humans don't destroy themselves, we will need to find a world to expand to. Our technology and understanding of the universe just seem too limited at this point in our evolution.

using current technology, it would be easier to mine on Mars (or any sizeable planetary body) than it would to try and mine an asteroid. Right now, to mine or drill on Earth we need to be able to lubricate the drill bit, with water usually, which would be impossible on an airless asteroid. Also, there's the issue of no atmosphere to dissipate the heat generated by the friction of the drilling/mining. And then there's the issue of the debris that would inevitably be floating around our drill site forever because of the microgravity environment of an asteroid.

On Mars, there's water, and sufficient gravity to keep the dust down, as it were, and a large enough planetary body/atmosphere to dissipate the heat.

The gravity would also be helpful when it comes to refining, as we don't know how we'd separate the metals we want from the raw ore in a zero-gravity environment (iron, aluminum, titanium, etc).

And Mars does have some other desirable metals/minerals, such as rare earth metals, magnesium, selenium, sulfur, etc.