Until there's a major breakthrough in physics, I don't think manned exploration beyond earth orbit or the moon is worth the tremendous costs. There's really no real incentive to go to Mars other than its own sake. There's absolutely nothing there of any use to us. Only interesting thing is finding out whether bacterial life ever existed there, and robots are doing that work now, so no need to send humans on a 2 year RT journey. Plus space is still really dangerous.
I'm all for exploring the solar system and beyond and I think humans if we survive long enough will eventually make it to the stars and I hope so. But it won't be rocket technology or anything based on velocity/propulsion that gets us there. It'll be some new branch of physics we've yet to discover. Maybe some sort of hyperspace fold or worm holes. There is this theoretical physicist named Miguel Alcubierre that has some interesting theories on how to get to faster than light travel by collapsing space-time in front of a ship while expanding space-time behind it so that you are moving inside of a "bubble" that doesn't violate the laws physics. And even then, we don't have technology in the foreseeable future that could provide that sort of energy output. Anti-matter might be the most powerful form of fuel we could envision and the technology to make it in large numbers and contain it isn't even on the horizon yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
Until something like that is invented, we can forget humans ever leaving the solar system or traveling even to other planets in our own system with the ease that we can fly a jet to another country.
I'm all for exploring the solar system and beyond and I think humans if we survive long enough will eventually make it to the stars and I hope so. But it won't be rocket technology or anything based on velocity/propulsion that gets us there. It'll be some new branch of physics we've yet to discover. Maybe some sort of hyperspace fold or worm holes. There is this theoretical physicist named Miguel Alcubierre that has some interesting theories on how to get to faster than light travel by collapsing space-time in front of a ship while expanding space-time behind it so that you are moving inside of a "bubble" that doesn't violate the laws physics. And even then, we don't have technology in the foreseeable future that could provide that sort of energy output. Anti-matter might be the most powerful form of fuel we could envision and the technology to make it in large numbers and contain it isn't even on the horizon yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
Until something like that is invented, we can forget humans ever leaving the solar system or traveling even to other planets in our own system with the ease that we can fly a jet to another country.