The first human space mission to the Asteroid Belt could take place within 50 years, say rocket engineers, provided humans reach Mars by 2038. Their prediction is based on an economic analysis of the rate at which space budgets increase over time and how humans have increased their sphere of operations since the dawn of the space age.
The goal of Jonathan Jiang at the Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, and colleagues, was to work out a timeframe over which crewed missions to the Asteroid Belt, to Jupiter and even to Saturn might take place.
