Landing the first humans on the surface of Mars will be no easy task. The communications blackout from the top of the atmosphere to the surface will be “7 minutes of terror” when we won’t know whether or not the astronauts and the lander have survived the descent. And since it takes 14 minutes for a signal to reach Earth from Mars, that news – good or bad – will already be ancient by the time we receive it. But we did the moon and this is what’s next. It’s been 43 years since we first landed on another world. Let’s go already.