Do you think mankind has reached it's pick?

Yeah, maybe not the best example since they've been a few decades away for forty years!

Rarely I think there are two things that will push both governments and commercial interests into space:

1) Some type of fuel like above
2) Rare earth metals.

So much of our technology is dependent upon rare earth metals that at some point, we're going to have no choice but finding extraterrestrial sources. If it turns out that the Moon, Mars (or one of its moons), or some asteroid is full of them, a race to get the technology in place to mine it will begin.

Originally Posted by Tragos
Thrasher Mars is a dead planet (no active core) so no lava and yet there is plenty of water but because of pressure it can never be in liquid form.

Nope, you are wrong:

Scientists Say Mars Has A Liquid Iron Core

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases…0307071457.htm

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzing three years of radio tracking data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, concluded that Mars has not cooled to a completely solid iron core, rather its interior is made up of either a completely liquid iron core or a liquid outer core with a solid inner core. Their results are published in the March 7, 2003 online issue of the journal Science.

Originally Posted by Tragos
Thrasher Mars is a dead planet (no active core) so no lava and yet there is plenty of water but because of pressure it can never be in liquid form.

And what does that have to do with what I said?

Originally Posted by Pladio
The problem I had was that whoever posted about going to Mars at first (Thrasher?) made it seem as if it would be easy, with no problems whatsoever

I never said it would be easy. That's your poor interpretation of what I said.

Lol! Sorry for going on this long rant then

I probably wasn't clear. My bad. By saying "it wouldn't be that hard", I meant to say it wouldn't be impossible, certainly. As BN said, we would have to throw a lot of resources at it. Technically it's doable, though.

Though I'd rather we do robotic exploration, and extraterrestrial planet finding.

Originally Posted by BillSeurer
Nope, you are wrong:

Scientists Say Mars Has A Liquid Iron Core

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases…0307071457.htm

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzing three years of radio tracking data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, concluded that Mars has not cooled to a completely solid iron core, rather its interior is made up of either a completely liquid iron core or a liquid outer core with a solid inner core. Their results are published in the March 7, 2003 online issue of the journal Science.

Thanks for the update but there is no volcanic or tectonic activity and the magnetosphere is pretty weak so i guess the correct is to say that Mars is almost a dead planet

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
Ehh, the closest and best bets?

Except for Mars there aren't any good bets in a feasable distance as far as I know…. but maybe you have super secret intel?

Hopefully within the next few hundred years, or at least few thousand, we will find a good candidate planet for an earth-like environment (i.e. life!). Shame I won't be around to see it!

Originally Posted by huggster
Hopefully within the next few hundred years, or at least few thousand, we will find a good candidate planet for an earth-like environment (i.e. life!). Shame I won't be around to see it!

There is actually one good shot at life within the solar system, although it being anything more than micro-cellular in nature is somewhat unlikely.

Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, has a mostly solid ice exterior and a (we think) layer of liquid water between it and the core. Tectonic forces from that region's shifting gravity fields provide kinetic and heat energy. Some kinds of Earth's bacteria would be capable of living in such an environment, whether or not anything could develop there in the first place is currently unanswerable.

Personally, I would like to see real movement towards creating a space elevator. We have the materials, we have the tech, and its creation would almost eliminate the cost of getting material into and back from space, which is somewhere between 80-90% of the total cost of a mission (construction aside).

Of course, I don't think NASA and the other space programs in existence are currently capable of handling the project. The ISS fiasco is a good example of why. I wonder if mining corporations could be encouraged to fund the bill in exchange for rights on certain claims out there.