Talk:Exploration of Mars

SpaceX plans not appearing here?
I just wonder, why SpaceX plans are not here. At least Elon Musk keeps talking about SpaceX's mission to Mars, the rockets to be ready in 2019 (in his calendar, which may mean 2021 AD :) Could someone please englight me why these plans don't appear here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.102.32.168 (talk) 10:35, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi! Can you please show us a reliable source about the connection of the Mars exploration and the SpaceX projects ?LuigiPortaro29 (talk) 16:52, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * First, the BFR rocket will perform only small Earth-bound suborbital tests in 2019. Not yet flying to Mars in many years. Second, SpaceX offers transportation for hire. It does not intend to settle Mars nor explore it. Cheers,  BatteryIncluded (talk) 17:13, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * At best, I'd say the BFR flights to Mars in 2022 and 2024 are "proposed". There is a vast amount of development and testing to be done and Mars may be 10 years in the horizon if all goes well, according to President and COO of SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell. Rowan Forest (talk) 00:34, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think SpaceX is considered a serious contender yet. They have yet to do a serious design study and address the issues required to get to Mars and back. DieselDude (talk) 21:42, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Elon Musk just announced that "Starship will be on Mars within 5 years"
 * https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1768810190718009446?s=20
 * You could probably add this mission to the 2028/2029 launch window. 2604:3D08:137F:6100:B167:248D:8991:CEE1 (talk) 01:45, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

InSight mission
Keep it out of active missions table, until it's actually begins it's primary mission. It's not on active mission ATM. Elk Salmon (talk) 13:56, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Negative. The mission started at launch. Rowan Forest (talk) 00:23, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The table title is "Active missions at Mars", note the word "at". When the InSight lander successfully arrives (currently scheduled around 26 November 2018) then it can be added. Editor Bob (talk) 08:24, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean. I agree. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 13:29, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Color Scheme
Could someone explain the color scheme for the timeline of past missions? It seems to vary between entries. WeatherMan142 (talk) 06:23, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It was highly inconsistent before, I've unified it now, though the failure template seems to freak out with merged cells (ie Yinghuo). Left those uncoloured for now. --ERAGON (talk) 16:45, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Just today I was about to delete seemingly random lunar missions highlighted with dark shades (List of lunar missions). Then I realized they were lunar flybys. Yes, a legend (color guide) would be helpful. Rowan Forest (talk)

Budget units in mission table
Currently the units given for budgets for missions is in billion USD, however there are a good number of missions several orders of magnitude below that level. Should we switch it to millions of USD? I also think we need consistency on the number of significant figures used. --ERAGON (talk) 15:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

"Timeline" section: Duplication
The "Timeline" section is a duplication of the article List of missions to Mars. It makes this article extremely long, and is problematic to update both identical lists if unaware. I suggest we just delete it and show a link to List of missions to Mars. Rowan Forest (talk) 18:42, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree, I didn't know that article existed. The table in the list article is somewhat cleaner and generally easier to read anyway. --ERAGON (talk) 20:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I've migrated the cancelled concepts over to the other article -which previously did not cover that- and deleted the remainder of the section. --ERAGON (talk) 23:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Nice job. Thanks! Rowan Forest (talk) 00:24, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

"Probing Difficulties" section: Misleading?
The table in this section seems unnecessarily focused on one particularly bad stretch, and has the appearance of being cherry-picked specifically to make Mars exploration look less successful and/or more difficult than it actually has been. There have been 18 missions since 1999, 14 of which were successful, and eight of those are still operational. There were 28 missions prior to 1988, and twelve of those were fully or partially successful. And the Phobos 2 mission, which is in the table, was partially successful, not a failure: while the lander portions failed, the orbiter returned many images both of Mars and of Phobos. I don't think anyone is going to claim exploring Mars is easy, but this section makes it look harder than the actual historical record shows. The Rev Dr Sherwood Forrester (talk) 17:30, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
 * By looking at the title of that section, the text must deal with failures. Not misleading nor false, but the main subject of this section. Rowan Forest (talk) 01:21, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it was false. But it does lean towards misleading.  It focuses on one ten year stretch of whatever you want to call it — bad luck, the Great Galactic Ghoul, statistics doing what statistics do — out of over fifty years of work.  The idea of the so-called 'Mars Curse' exists, but it needs context against the full scope of Mars exploration programs.  According to the List of missions to Mars, there have been 55 attempts (I'm not counting Dawn and Rosetta, which were only there incidentally), 28 of which have been successful or partially successful, and the statistics in this section should be shown in that context. The Rev Dr Sherwood Forrester (talk) 17:26, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Confusing sentence in "Human mission proposals" section
The antecedent to the word "this" is unclear, and it seems there may be a lack of thought continuity in the paragraph since it's completely unclear how the benefits mentioned are anticipated to materialize. "This method will save lives on Earth, add potentially trillions of dollars to the world economy annually, and provide a stable colony on Mars." I don't know how to fix it. Can somebody help? I guess the intro paragraph is pretty much a mess. Tom Haws (talk) 22:48, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I think the reference back is clear enough; the bigger problems are both the complete lack of sourcing for the claims made in that sentence, and the vast difference between asteroid mining and Martian farming with regard to feasibility and utility -- they should not be combined as if they were one thing. I'll have a whack at a rewrite. The Rev Dr Sherwood Forrester (talk) 18:45, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello. Thanks for the changes. By the way, in the beginning may have been 2/3 failure, but currently the mission failure rate stands at approximately 52%:, , , . Please include this.  Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 19:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your references -- I already included a count in the Past and current missions section, noting 25 successes out of 55 missions based on the mission timeline for an even worse 54.5% failure rate (or as I prefer to think of it, a 45.5% success rate; glass half full!)—I didn't include Dawn and Rosetta because they were just passing by, and I can't think of a good way to factor in the partial success/failures. Either way, Mars is a pain.  It has by far the lowest success rate of any exploration target. The Rev Dr Sherwood Forrester (talk) 21:05, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Someone please fix it Soundslikewill (talk) 04:59, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna cry Soundslikewill (talk) 05:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Active Marsmissions
The table is limited to 2001 onwards. I'd opt for 1996 as a 0-measurement as start. 2001 is rather arbitrary and not a logical start. PS: a horizontal scrollable table starting with the year before the very first mission to include might even be better. Grifo (talk) 11:12, 19 February 2021 (UTC)