>>11840672At the time of Apollo humans had only been in space cumulatively for maybe a few weeks at most. Not the 2 years or so required for Mars. One of the major goals of every space station built by humans was to study the effects of long term micro gravity living; and the effects are NOT pretty. There are blood flow issues, bone density issues, muscle atrophy; the list goes on. It takes astronauts months to return to "normal" health after an extended stay at the ISS. What's more, they NEVER fully recover from the increased radiation they are exposed to in LEO. We've managed to mitigate a lot of these issues with diet and exercise routines, but micro gravity is still a fucking nightmare on the body and, currently, we CANNOT keep a person in space for more than a year or so before they risk serious and permanent damage. So a requirement for any Mars mission is some equivalent of gravity like a centrifugal wheel module on their spacecraft, something still in the realm of science fiction currently.
So, an Apollo style "one and done" mission is completely outside the realm of possibility.
That all being said, we could have conceivable gone to Mars by now if NASA had focused it's shuttle program money into building a Mars vehicle in LEO with a series of Saturn V launches throughout the 70's & 80's, along with a partnership with Russia to work on the "microgravity kills humans" problem. Basically let the Russian's play with space stations and instead of funding the ISS and shuttle program, use the money to design and launch a spaceship capable of getting humans safely to Mars and back. You would need to launch supplies, habitats, etc, prior to the Mars spacecraft leaving Earth orbit but it would be "do-able" with 70's-90's tech.
So basically, if you want to go to Mars and not die, you would need like 3 decades of NASA's primary funding and focus and it would still be wildly unsafe. Mostly because NASA sucks at budgeting and acquisition.
