At the present time there is no country in the world able to send an expedition to Mars by itself but the entire humankind masters the package of technologies necessary for implementation of such program, – State Astronomical Institute of Moscow state university professor Vyacheslav Tuyryschev believes.
“Such tasks cannot be solved by any country alone but if we are able to motivate our space agencies and governments of different countries to develop integrated international program to prepare this expedition I believe we’ll be able to shift the flight to the earlier date”, – said Tuyryschev at the Week of Cosmonautics in Mexico dedicated to the Cosmonautics Day.
Tyuryschev supposes the preparations for Mars flight will take about 20-25 years. “But earlier we have to perform a number of unmanned flights, probably to asteroids, probably longer stay of a human in space will be needed”, – the scientist stated.
According to him there are several issues to be settled down before the flight. Among them creation of artificial G-load, medical treatment in space and various psychological tasks since during the flight the cosmonauts will stay within a small crew for a long period of time.
At the same time the scientist believes that Moon station project seems much more realistic nowadays. “Putting financial matters aside and considering technical possibilities only we are almost ready to create a Moon station. We already have technologies necessary for station’s life support and delivery means.
The scientist points out that the most important task at the moment is to set up priorities.
“Provided that first Moon flights were motivated by USSR and US political reasons now these tasks must be solved from lunar resources practical use and scientific experiments point of view.
He also believes that the year 2015 will trigger commercial cosmonautics. “First motor vehicles were very expensive and only few people could afford Ford’s first autos. Just the same I believe that first space flights will be unaffordable for most of us but what will be in, say, 50 years. I suppose many people will get the opportunity to fly to space and future generations will easily fly to the orbit and spend time there enjoying the Earth’s view from the space.
Image credit – NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/UA
