Sending people to Mars will be challenging, for all the wrong reasons

25 February 2025

Maciej Cegłowski’s in depth (deep dive) articles on an array of topics are always worthy reading, even if I’m not always able to consume his pieces in one go. In his latest long form column, he takes on the prospect of sending an Apollo-like flight to Mars, complete with a human crew on board. But going to Mars is not even remotely like a jaunt to the Moon:

A trip to Mars will be commital in a way that has no precedent in human space flight. The moon landings were designed so that any moment the crew could hit the red button and return expeditiously to Earth; engineers spent the brief windows of time when an abort was infeasible chain smoking and chewing on their slide rules.

But within a few days of launch, a Mars-bound crew will have committed to spending years in space with no hope of resupply or rescue. If something goes wrong, the only alternative to completing the mission will be to divert into a long, looping orbit that gets the spacecraft home about two years after departure.

Sending people to Mars is not beyond the realm of possibility, but it will be difficult, incredibly difficult.