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RE: Official NASA "Journey to Mars" posters promoting careers on Mars.
Yep, genuine NASA posters...
http://marsmobile.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/
Although they are 6 year old promotional material... But nice to dream!
I find this whole topic astonishing. Bearing in mind that just over 100 years ago we didn't have planes.....................For some reason, I have this vision of holidaying in Space and seeing Saturn's rings. What an amazing sight that would be. Although that is a 5 year journey, one way. Oh hang on. No, that's Jupiter (quite a jump from the next planet out from Mars, to go from 9 months journey time to 5 years). So Saturn would presumably be quite a bit longer. Apparently, Pioneer 11 took 6 and a half years but of course, the payload would be much smaller than a human cargo ship.
I think it's reasonable to assume that there'll be at least some two way traffic between Earth and Mars in the next 100 years, and maybe even a permanent base in the style of The Martian. I'd imagine Jupiter and Saturn might be another 100 years out from that though. So, sadly I don't think either of us will see the rings, unless of course they come up with some sort of way of uploading consciousness in the next few years!
All of this is dependent on us not blowing ourselves up first of course :-)
That certainly seems a solid prospect. Of course, if we get some new kind of fuel cell, then 8/10 years whatever it is to Saturn now, could be dramatically reduced to such a point that a percentage of humans would take that trip. I think that the 18 months trip to Mars there and back (with the 3 month wait in between for optimum orbit position) is a reasonable amount of time for a human to travel to and from another planet . I think a journey to Saturn right now, at some 10 years (guessing) one way, would be a chunk that 99.9 % of humans would not take, even if we could safely do it........Dependant on us not blowing ourselves up, of course.