With renewed interest in a manned mission to Mars, one of the greatest challenges engineers and scientists must face is developing a technologically feasible plan for getting there. People have been hatching such plans ever since rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun wrote his version, "The Mars Project", in 1952.
NASA's very first long-range space plan in 1959 suggested that Mars would be the planet astronauts would most likely visit. In 1969, NASA proposed to send a manned mission to Mars by 1981. But by 1986, the agency had not even successfully established an Earth-orbiting space station, the first step of its Mars plan.
Several other plans followed, including one from the National Commission on Space and one from a committee chaired by the astronaut Sally Ride. Each set down its own timeline and stepping stones for going to Mars: a lunar outpost leading to a fully operational base and colony on Mars by 2027 or robotic missions, a lunar base, and a space station to have us in an outpost on Mars by 2010.
None of these plans is currently in effect, and so the question of a human expedition to Mars is once again up for debate. How, when and why do we go to Mars? Do we launch a mission from Earth, from a lunar base, or from an Earth-orbiting space station? What propulsion system will the mission use? How will timely communication be maintained with the crew during the trip and after a landing? How will interest in the Mission be maintained on Earth? Answers to these questions won't come only from the fact that we are able to go to Mars. Any successful plan for a manned mission to the red planet will have to take much more than just our technological abilities into account.
