It's easy to dream of putting humans on Mars, but designing the spacecraft to actually get there will be no easy feat. One of the open questions about how we'll do it is whether it will be with established rocket technology or something entirely new. Whatever spacecraft makes it to the Red Planet one day will need to be extremely large, able to carry lots of heavy equipment and capable of sustaining a crew for many months on end. There are a number of players already developing rockets to try to achieve that goal, by harnessing both old and new technology. This story is Part 2 of Quirks & Quarks' Pathway to Mars series. Each instalment looks at one part of the huge challenges inherent in the most ambitious journey of exploration we've ever attempted - a human mission to Mars.

From the Curio.ca streaming audio-visual collection.