EP wrote: It's been feasible since 1965, but the general public gives sending men to MArs a fairly low priority. So unless you can pay for it out of your own pocket and not the government's you won't be sending anyone to Mars any time soon. And even if you want to pay for it yourself, if there's any life on Mars, no one will allow you to go, except on a one way trip.

Chris writes: Got any proof of this? Just because you write something doesn't make it so. In many of your posts you mention 85%. It's a number you made up! You do realize this don't you? You are adding other people's polling numbers together without support of anykind!

I think it would have taken considerable modification of Apollo Era hardware to use it at Mars and no plan of that era was anymore serious than any after it (or before it). Example: when Bush asked NASA for a return to the Moon and a mission to Mars and got the 90 day plan with it's 450 billion 30 years budgets... He was serious, NASA was serious the nation would have supported the project (as much as was needed), Congress gave blank stares to the price tag...it died...

Al Caray wrote: "Nobody with the wits to realize that "War of the Worlds" was fiction, believes that "Mars is Earth-like, and thus an "easy" place for man to migrate to." Certainly no one at NASA does."

EP wrote: This is funny, as "War of the Worlds" was thought to be possible at least until 1965. For that matter, NASA is still focused to its core on promoting the idea of an "Earth-like" Mars and the search for water and life there, about which the general public could care less.

Chris writes: By 1960s nobody but B-movie makers believed in War of the Worlds like aliens or the habitability of Mars. I was a kid back then and remember clearly National Geographic and Readers Digest and others have articles about Mars having an atmosphere less than 10% of ours and it being colder than Antarctica! The only thing believed to live there would have been lichen or bacteria. Of coarse this is before we knew of our own extremophiles!