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Comment by elorant | Hacker News Reader

Unless we invent a much faster engine, traveling to and back from Mars is practically impossible. In the 16 months it takes to get there and return the amount of radiation that will be received from humans could pose significant health risks. It's not surprising that NASA's plans about a manned mission to Mars talk about a one way trip and building some kind of habitat there where they will stay permanently.

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Astronauts spend 6+ months at a time on the space station, without protection from the Earth's atmosphere. I'm told the magnetosphere is only helpful against solar flares, not cosmic rays, and you can shield against solar flares with a storm shelter on the vehicle.

Also, you can do a one way trip in 6 months if you're willing to spend a bit more fuel. So 12 months total in space.

A trip to Mars today, given our present state of knowledge, would be safer than Apollo was given our knowledge at the time.

It has long been Musk's contention that going to Mars would mean moving there, at least initially. He places less value on the return trip than NASA seems to.

Yeah, unless something changes in the time it takes us to put a manned mission together it's pretty much a given that the first trip will be one way only. It greatly simplifies things not having to worry about how to get back.

We have invented it, it's just that there are some political (and PR) obstacles to developing and using it: http://www.islandone.org/Propulsion/ProjectOrion.html

"Our motto was 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'", recalls Dyson. Orion would have been more akin to the rocket ships of science fiction than to the cramped capsules of Gagarin and Glenn. One hundred and fifty people could have lived aboard in relative comfort; the useful payload would have been measured in thousands of tons. Orion would have been built like a battleship, with no need for the excruciating weight-saving measures adopted by chemically-propelled spacecraft.

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