Flight to Mars: Everything You Should Know

So you have a ticket to Mars. You may have to wait a bit before you can board the spaceship. Launch opportunities appear only once every couple of years, when Earth and Mars coincide. Flying to Mars is not as easy as it seems. It’s a hell of a ride. To escape from the earth’s gravity, you need to reach a cosmic speed – this is 40,000 kilometers per hour or 11 kilometers per second.

This means you have to train to handle high G-forces. During takeoff, astronauts experience at least three times the Earth’s gravitational force (gf) (most people can withstand up to 5 gf before losing consciousness) and up to 8 gf upon re-entry. Once you escape the gravity of the Earth, you will feel weightless and your journey will begin
Surviving a Flight to Mars Your journey to Mars will take an average of seven months. (Read more about how long to fly to the Red Planet here). During this time, you will be sharing a space of 8 by 11 meters with at least four people. Unfortunately, the view from the window will not be the best. Plus, when you first leave Earth or just arrive on Mars, you will see almost nothing, not even stars. This is because at least one side of your spacecraft will be constantly illuminated by the Sun, says Jonty Horner, an astronomer at the University of South Queensland
“If the Sun is anywhere in your field of vision, or anything in your field of vision is illuminated by sunlight, it will be much brighter than the stars.” As you move farther and farther away from Earth, you lose real-time connectivity. There will be a delay of about 12 minutes by the time you reach Mars, so you and the other passengers will have to work together in the event of an emergency. One of the most serious threats you can face is a solar flare that spews radiation into space
Unlike astronauts on the International Space Station, you are not protected by the earth’s magnetic field. So hopefully your spacecraft will have a radiation panic room in which you can sit for two or three days until the threat is gone. And while weightlessness may sound like an interesting experience, it destroys your body. One way to deal with this is to use a spaceship that rotates to simulate gravity. You may also need to exercise to keep you toned. Literally.
Spending a lot of time in little or no gravity without exercise interferes with human senses, said Gordon Waddington, whose team at the University of Canberra is developing exercises. “One of the really important things that will happen during a flight to Mars is how your brain listens to movement and your body model changes,” says Professor Waddington.