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My point exactly. You just do not just send a team to Mars on some Edgar Rice Burroughs dream that it's your God-given right to do so.

I made no such point.

These individuals are not just in orbit for two years, they're in interplanetary space. No shield from Earth, no nothing.

Ah, but there would be a shield from Earth, it would be artificial. Humans are able to survive on the Moon thanks to good planning and engineering.

I'm sorry folks. I do not mean to play the cynic. I'm the first who would want them to get their as ducky as could be. :-)

The only impediments to getting to Mars and back are technological (which can be overcome) and microgravity exposure (which will just have to be endured). My view about human missions to Mars is that remote robotic exploration are far cheaper, obviously less risky, and will be more autonomous in the future than they are now. Also I don't see any budget for that kind of mission, unless it's a one of a kind (land, plant the flag, grab some rocks, return home).

Also regarding this (I'm too lazy to hunt up the post), putting a space station in orbit around Mars would be a better approach, because it makes it possible to go to Mars and have an actual destination for longer stays. It allows NASA to build a group of astronauts with experience going to and from Mars, learning the steps of getting there in order to minimize risk. More probes could be dropped for surface exploration, remote controlled from the orbital crews.

After some period of time, a lander (actually, more than one, for safety) could be accumulated, docked to the station, for the descent to and ascent from the surface. Robotic exploration to find the best sites for surface installations would be followed by such landings.

I don't see colonization of Mars as practical. Mars has a surface atmospheric pressure about the same as found at 40 miles altitude on Earth, and liquid water doesn't ordinarily exist there. Terraforming using so-called greenhouse gases hasn't any feasibility. OTOH, a permanent human presence, analogous to bases on Antarctica (which also isn't a practical place to live per se) is feasible. But it will not be cheap.

Going to the Moon is not the same as going to Mars. The Moon, 300,000 miles away though it may be, is still bathed in the Earth's magnetosphere. A trip to Mars requires a trip into the zone where the Sun's radiation is not held at bay by Earth's field lines and an arrival point with no magnetosphere.

Transporting the oxygen, the water, the food. Landing on a planet that has been notoriously hard to hit even with probes...

I think it's going to have to be a stunt, same as the Apollo Moon landings. A very, very expensive, very risky adventure.

I would rather have a human somewhere than a robot any day. But going to Mars - you would have to have a flying Holiday Inn of oxygen, water, and food. The crew would have a skeletal depletion beyond anything on record for the ISS record-setter for months in orbit. They will arrive to Mars, each of them, with weak frames. I think the trip itself is the killer. But Mars has proven tricky to hit even with the latest technology. We've crashed a lot of probes there. Russia has never even managed to hit it for the most part.

It's a big job, an expensive job, and the people footing the bill (US taxpayers) simply have interest because it's not a pissing contest with our worst enemy anymore.