SOCHI, November 13. /TASS/. A mission to Mars should be implemented by several countries rather than by one and all technologies are available for that, Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky told TASS on the sidelines of the second global forum of young diplomats on Tuesday.
The Mars mission should become a global task and new technologies will recoup investments in the Martian project as they will be in demand on Earth, he said.
"I won’t talk about the time limits because everything depends on the sequestration of space exploration budgets and funds re-distribution in favor of the defense sector. A separate country won’t be able to undertake such an expensive project and this should be a joint operation. In principle, we have all the technologies," the cosmonaut said.
"Mars should become a global task. We should strive for it. The youth will join the effort, investments will come and, most importantly, the flight can be implemented, in principle. Another thing is that other technologies should be developed to make the flight quicker and safer and all of them will recoup investments in the Martian project because they will be in demand on Earth," he noted.
The cosmonaut stressed that he was the supporter of the development of precisely the Martian project.
"The Moon can be an intermediate stage and some other station can be created before the Moon and these will become stage-by-stage points. At the first station, we will practice a new spacecraft, for example. On the Moon, we will practice take-off and landing and there can be some small project of a lunar base, a lunar observatory. Further on, it will already be possible to fly to Mars and there are no technical obstacles for that now," Ryazansky said.