Hey I just watched a show on the science channel that I found really cool. It was called "Mars Underground". So basically, this aerospace engineer, Robert Zubrin, came up with a plan called "Mars Direct". Mars Direct was a plan to get man on mars within 10 years. After negotiations with NASA they came up with "Mars semi-direct", an idea of sending 3 structures/vehicles to mars. One would create fuel, one would create water and the other would be a living space with extra supplies. 2 years would be spent setting this stuff up and creating the necessary resources on mars. Then another set of those same vehicles would be sent, but this time the living space would have people in it. This plan picked up a lot of speed but eventually was dropped because some at NASA thought it wasn't safe. They were woried about solar flares and other interstellar radiation. Robert Zubrin is still pushing this project and trying to get NASA to go for it for the third time.
Also they were talking about a possible way of making mars hospitable for humans. They would set up giant building that would create carbon dioxide, and after something like 100 years the tempurature on mars would be high enough to support human life, the water in the ground would liquify and trapped carbon dioxide in the ground would get released warming mars even more. Then with the abundance of carbon dioxide some form of plant life would be planted on mars, genetically engineered if need be. Then there would be oxygen, heat, water and it would all just snowball from there.
I thought the show was pretty cool and it all sounds pretty good in theory. What do you guys think?