If your intent is to come up with reasons not to do something then it is easy to create a long list and do nothing. I suspect the various space agencies have bigger fish to fry such as shielding against high energy particles. By the way, the record for consecutive days in space is about 15 months. I'm pretty sure the Russian who holds that record didn't flip out or get in any fights with his crew members. An initial roundtrip mission to Mars will be a bit longer at about 21 months, depending on the date you depart and return (because of the orbital mechanics) and how much time is spent either in orbit around Mars or on the surface. There are some optimal times to go because of the orbital mechanics. 2033 is the earliest optimal time that it could happen (based on planning), but I suspect the probability of it actually happening is low because of budget and lack of certain technologies.
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Originally Posted by LuvNH
According to what I recently read, it is a nine month journey just to get to Mars. All you need is just one person to be slightly tilted off center, or to have two people take an immediate dislike to each other to cause the whole trip to malfunction. I imagine someone will say "well the powers that be will have to test people for this, that and the other"and still you will have someone unstable in that capsule. Nine months is a very long time.
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