Poll of the Week: Mars Tech

Our Poll of the Week reflected the weekly theme of Mars exploration, and emphasized the human missions that one day will occur.  This was to get the OLC thinking about exploring there, and prime the interest in our Live Chat with the Mars Desert Research Station Crew 101 from Georgia Tech.

The most popular answer to our question suggests a need for a better (read: faster) propulsion system to shorten the duration of the journey:

I definitely think we need to work on our propulsion systems, so we have an efficient, timely way to get to and return from Mars. Being in space for long periods of time is not good for the human body, so finding an efficient method to get to Mars, that will have the least "wear and tear", so to speak, on the human body, is what I think is most important for getting there. It would imagine it would also be more cost effective to have a shortened trip.

 Although relativity may rear its ugly head:

I think we need to figure out a way to make a person go the speed of light, slow down and not create an atomic bomb. if we could achieve this we not only would be able to go to mars in a few minutes but we could go interstellar. anther great thing about inventing an object that would do this, is that it would allow us to never be late to a business meeting, school, or anything else that you are usually late for.

 The next two most popular answer involved basics of life support: air and food.  Food was the most popular, but then this was a poll of teenagers (JK!)

There was an interesting comment about the least chosen answer:

I'm not sure the numbers, but from what I hear it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get communications going between Earth and Mars. Is it even possible to improve the time, or since the radio waves travel at the speed of light is that a lost cause and we'd have to just use autonomous decisions on most everything?  I feel that would take a lot of work to get on par. 

 True, it would take any time from 2 minutes to a half hour for a signal to travel between planets (based on their relative position in orbit around the sun) and double that to return an answer.  This may be more important than first glance, as it would mean that everything the crew would need to know in an emergency situation must be present on the ship.  Seconds can mean the difference between life and death, and waiting for an answer can be disastrous.  But even this can be remedied by technology (data storage, etc.)

This weeks poll asks about green technology - what is NASA's greatest contribution.  Take the poll, and defend your choice on the Discussion Board!  You may see your comment appear here!