Going to Mars

We either muster the courage to go

Or we risk the possibility of stagnation and decay - Robert Zubrin

It has been years since Earthlings visited the moon, or even left the secure confines of the area around the Earth. Recently, NASA announced another planned mission to mars expected to launch on  November 18th. Space.com has this to say about the launch:

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, or Maven for short, is due to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 18. Maven is designed to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere in great detail, and mission scientists hope the probe's observations yield insights into how Mars shifted from a relatively warm, wet world in the ancient past to the cold and dry place we know today.

"The Maven mission is a significant step toward unraveling the planetary puzzle about Mars' past and present environments," NASA science chief John Grunsfeld said in a statement. "The knowledge we gain will build on past and current missions examining Mars and will help inform future missions to send humans to Mars.

It brings us to my question. Do you think that humans are technologically capable of going to Mars? What kind of  problems do you think we would face on our journey to the Red Planet?

7 Planets in a solar system

Some 2500 light years from Earth there is a dwarf star with the unassuming name KIC 11442793. 

Around this unassuming star lies a system of 7 planets - the most dense planetary system around a star aside from our own solar system detected as of yet. The planets orbit the star in a much tighter orbit than our own planets orbit good old Sol. 

The discussion on Planet Hunters forums was responsible for one of the identifications. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope's observations are observed and sorted by Planet Hunters because the sheer amount of incoming data is far too much for scientists to follow on their own. Kepler uses the Transit system for determining the position and location of new planets. This involved looking at the dip in light from the parent star as a planet passes in front of it. 

Although it may resemble the system we call home, it's vastly different because of the tighter orbits. There's a lot of things that our system has that KIC 11442793 doesn't. The thing is, As much as it's similar to our system it's not home and 2200 light years is a helluva long way away. Here's to us developing FTL travel so we may actually get to experience these alien worlds firsthand...