“you’d have to wait until it is in the right position, then pack enough supplies such as food, water for 9 months and that is just one way!”
Probes have done it in less than 5 months.
“Probes have done it in less than 5 months.”
Doesn’t matter. We already had existing rockets that could push something as light as the probes to well more than escape velocity (25,000 mph). And NASA was willing to spend the extra fuel to get it there all the sooner.
The toilet paper supply alone on the Mars mission will outweigh any probe we’ve yet sent there. The manned mission will require the most powerful rocket ever built (tens of times more powerful than the Saturn V, or the combined thrusts of the STS’s liquid and solid fuel motors), just to get it to 25,000 mph. That rocket isn’t even on the drawing board yet.
Plus, brakes don’t work in space. Whatever speed you put in on this end has to come out on the other. Humans will need a far softer landing on Mars than the probes had, and the landing is more controllable and less technically challenging if they only travel at 25,000 to get there rather than 45,000. Kinetic energy squares with the change in velocity 45K means more than 3x as much KE to be shed on the far end.
The odd thing about humans is they’ll be expecting to come home. The probes knew from the start theirs was a one-way trip. 90% of the fuel burned to get to Mars will be expended entirely on behalf of the supplies that make the return trip possible. So the “coming home” part massively increases both the logistical challenges and the the load launch vehicle has to push.
So either they’ll launch when the 25,000 mph rocket is ready, or wait another 20 years to be able to make the trip at 45,000.
It bears mention that the Dutch are five years into preparation for a 2023 manned mission to mars, and they fully intend on it being a one-way trip. They’re planning to send Mar’s first permanent human inhabitants. Eleven years preparation for a one-way mission, and even that is an ambitious timetable.
The hard part for Trump is going to be figuring out how to walk this back.
No they haven't.