And the rocket that would go to Mars is still at least a technological generation away.
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Oh, and it would really rather like to go to Mars, someday, if at all possible.
Working on more or less the same budgets, we could go to Mars.
At the news conference, Lansdorp said he'd like to go to Mars himself, but he isn't because his girlfriend won't come along.
He says that it is theoretically possible to go to Mars and back using the Dragon and Falcon Heavy systems manufactured by California-based firm SpaceX.
"The only way to do that is to expand it out and voila you have living space for three people to go to Mars, " he said.
"When you go to Mars, all bets are off, " said Dr. Nick Kanas, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied astronaut psychology.
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While Jobs is building his spaceship, Mark Zuckerberg is talking about killing his food, Larry Page is trying to go to Mars, and Larry Ellison is collecting samurai swords.
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It takes 7 minutes for the signal to go from Earth to Mars and back again.
If humans ever do go to asteroids or Mars, the scale of the infrastructure needed to complete a safe round trip could not possibly be launched on a single rocket from Earth.
President Obama has cut back on plans for Orion, which was going to go back to the moon and then on to Mars.
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"It may be that the grand prize of confirming life on Mars could go to the British, " he said.
We're going to take a short break and when we come back we're going to switch from Mars, Jupiter - where you want to go?
If the real goal is to fly to Mars, there is no reason at all to go via the moon.
His books always seemed to come out around election time, almost as if he were using a potential candidacy as a reason to go on chat shows and talk about his latest proposal to outsource Medicare to Mars or give fat people tax credits for gastric bands.
Europe is keen to have a go at touching down on Mars and the current baseline design for the orbiter mission calls for a 600kg entry, descent and landing module.
Those that go into HEO, or as Phobos-Grunt was meant to do, off to Mars, absolutely do need that protection.
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Wind River (nasdaq: WIND - news - people ) specializes in so-called device software, the fast, small operating systems and middleware that go into all sorts of noncomputer smart devices, from digital video recorders to industrial robots and the Mars Rover.
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