Life's last 7 trips

Humans on Mars?  Of course, and it will happen in my lifetime if it happens somewhere between now and 2040.  If Elon Musk has his way, it will happen in the next decade.  We'll see.

But when we do land on Mars, it will be, as it always is, a tribute to all that has gone before, to the foundation that has been established.  And, what has gone before? Oh, at this point it has only been all the rover landings and probe landings that have been sent.  We have found out much from the 23 missions.  For example, 6 of those missions were not successful.  They were mostly in the early going of trips to Mars.  But, each failure was important because of what we learned.  The successful trips were important for the same reason.  We learn either way.

But we know more about Mars than merely our own missions provide.  At the moment, along with the six operational orbiters and landers around and on the planet, India has an operational orbiter and the European Union has an operational lander collecting information, a lot of which we don't have or know.  China will try again; they lost a mother ship and orbiter in 2011 as did Russia.  Both countries will send again as soon as their economies become robust again.

For all countries, 51 missions to Mars have been attempted and less than half of them have been successful.  I'm impressed with the tenacity of the human spirit.  I think it has always been this way.  Which is a message to me if I think about it.  I have tried a number of endeavors in my lifetime.  Some of them didn't work out, probably at least half of them, just like the Mars missions.  The ones that haven't worked out have taught me much about people and life.  The U.S. has been successful on its last 7 trips.  I hope that kind of success rate after early failures will be true of my experience too. Once a person learns, success follows.  I'm counting on that.