How Are We Preparing For Mars?

I only hope that I'm alive for this!

A manned mission to Mars is going to be an arduous one.  There is going to be a lot of planning involved and astronauts are going to have to be at peak levels.  This will require months, if not years, of training to be able to cope with the realities of space travel.  Now, the United States government has decided to team up with privatized groups and other countries to send people into space, at an orbit around the Moon.  This bothers me.  Look, I've always promised myself that I would keep this non-political, but really?  How do you retire a fleet of reusable space ships without having a backup fleet?  Hopefully the next president will see the need for space exploration more than the current one.  We are leaders in space exploration!  Not hitchhikers!  My anger in this field takes over sometimes, and I apologize.

NASA is in the process of planning for a manned Mars mission, and in order to do this, they need to make sure that they are able to insure the survival of our astronauts.  There are a lot of variables that they need to take into account, from making sure that they are able to survive the radiation that the Red Planet will bombard them with (since it doesn't have an ozone layer,) to making sure that they can survive the rigors of isolationism.  To test these problems, NASA is planning on launching some "cislunar" space missions, which means that they will be taking place around the orbit of the moon.  They are planning on testing the habitation tech that they are going to be using on their journey to Mars.  There goal is to make sure that long-term habitation is possible on the Red Planet.  Here's what they had to say on the matter:

"The concepts that we're working on today call for us to begin in the early '20s with a set of missions involving Orion to get some early experience in cislunar space, leading to a series of longer missions," said Skip Hatfield, manager of the Development Projects Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center, during a session of the Humans to Mars Summit here May 6. 

I really do hope that the United States is serious about sending people to the Red Planet, and I honestly hope that I am able to be around to see it.  We do things because we can, and this is one of the most difficult things that we could do.  I hope and pray that we take this endeavor seriously, and that I'm able to witness it.

Another planet to explore...how cool would that be???