Voting for Mars

The Mars Society is now actively going out and finding the candidate in the 2008 presidential election that will most likely pursue a mission to mars. Chris Carberry, the political director of the Mars Society, is in charge of their Operation President 2008. This mission of theirs is to go to each presidential primary and ask the question of who is willing to send a man to mars. The Carberry is serious about their goal and wants to convey that, "that we're sane, serious people."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/10/mars_voter

Finding a way to Mars

Scientists are discovering more then ever that a journey to Mars may be far more difficult then they ever imagined. In 1969 Dr von Braun proposed a plan that would have put a man on Mars by 1982. Here we are in 2007 and we have yet to see any real evidence that a man will be on Mar in even 20 years. The ESA has a project, Aurora, that has the ultimate goal of sending a man to Mars by 2030. This of course is after they conduct numerous studies to see if the human body can even take such a journey. The Aurora project has one goal of examining long term missions. In 2008 the ESA is teaming up with Russian scientist on an experiment on what it would be like to travel to Mars with the Mars 500 project. Six volunteers are going to be sealed in an airtight capsule for 17 months with processed food and limited space. Scientist figure that the "crews" biggest problem is going to be to fight boredom, but they still don't know how they will really react to this situation. If everything goes well the scientist will have an idea of how a real crew might react on an actual trip to Mars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7021303.stm

50 year celebration

50 years ago today the Russians put the first satellite into space, Sputnik. This of course was one of the keys to beginning the space race. Without this first step into space it is hard to tell how fast NASA would have worked to get to the moon. At the time the Space Program was one of the biggest concerns of the nation. With the full support of the US it wasn't hard for NASA to put a man on the Moon. We can only hope that this fifty year anniversary will bolster America's desire to explore space and to reach Mars.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/10/dayintech_1004