• Question: considering all the debris surrounding the earth and the expense of it, do you think it will ever be possible for humans to land on Mars?

    Asked by annabelr to Adam, Breandan, Gabriel, Sarah, Sophie, Walaa on 6 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Breandan Murphy

      Breandan Murphy answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      You’re right there is a lot of space debris around Earth. This is my favorite visualisation of how the debris has increased.

      But when you look at these sort of visualisations, remember about the scales involved – each piece of debris being tracked in on the scale meters, whilst the planet is thousands of km wide. The visualization helps us understand there is a lot of stuff up there, but there are still pretty big gaps between the debris.

      And there are loads of really good ideas about how to clean it up – some concepts are shown here;
      https://www.space.com/36602-space-junk-cleanup-concepts.html

      Mars – I definitely think it will be possible for humans to land on Mars, a lot of the technology needed is around, the main questions are how should it be funded and are the risks that remain to the travelers making the journey too high?

      I wonder whether the first manned mission will be by a government agency like NASA/ESA or a private company like SpaceX? What do you think?

    • Photo: Sophie Williams

      Sophie Williams answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      Yes I think so! We have got people to the moon and at the rate SpaceX and Virgin are going I don’t think it will be long!

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