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If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they … well … why can’t they put a man a Mars? The seemingly impossible is on the minds of the folks at Intertops, who are currently (through 2020 only, so hurry) offering “Mission to Mars” proposition bets. Welcome to the future and to the following seriously long-term props!

Will a human land on Mars before December 31, 2020?
Yes: 3/1
No: 1/5

Will George W. Bush be the first human on Mars?
Yes: 900/1
No: OFF

Will the walls of the White House be painted red before December 31, 2020?
Yes: 5/1
No: 1/10

Us versus Them; what will happen first?
Human lands on Mars: 1/20
Extra-terrestrials land on Earth: 14/1

Well, why not a Mars Mission before 2020? Presidents Clinton and Bush II both publicly called for Mars exploration in the final days of their administrations. Macroeconomic problems aside, NASA will soon have phased out the space shuttle program altogether in favor of Orion space vessel and Ares rocket development; combined with the recent success of the international Phoenix mission to the red planet and a manned Mars landing seems inevitable.

But. The wheels of progress grind slowly despite enthusiasm. Though former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin once proclaimed emphatically that “A human space explorer will be able to set foot on Mars no later than the year 2020 and visit other planets in the solar system in the following decades” and “In no less than ten – and if we decide to do it, it could be done in ten – and certainly no more than 20 years, we’ll start writing history again and not looking back, but forward,” his bold statements came in May 2001. Goldin resigned in November 2001 while federal government budgets were getting good and shaken up in the wake of 9/11.

While current NASA administrator Michael Griffin has stated that NASA “aims to put a man on Mars by 2037,” former NASA engineer and writer James C. McLane III is even more skeptical, given the current bureaucratic situation at the agency:

“There are other viable proposals to put people on Mars … But they all have a major flaw: None could be accomplished in our lifetime. Workable concepts have been around at least since von Braun’s pioneering feasibility studies. Recent proposals require that we develop exotic new technologies (for example, nuclear-powered rocket fuel manufacturing equipment to take to Mars). It would take many decades to develop that hardware…”

All right, so how about non-US missions to Mars? While Wikipedia claims that “a number of Mars mission concepts and proposals have been put forth by Russian scientists,” with “stated dates for a launch sometime between 2016 and 2020.” Any more information on a red mission to the red planet is evasive at best.

Further west in Europe, the European Space Agency is apparently happy with its current Mars mission plan, which involves a joint mission with NASA to “send a mission to the Red Planet to collect and return geological samples” by the 2020s.

See, one of the primary problems with a mission to Mars (not to mention betting it) is timing: A window of opportunity for launch itself only happens every two years. NASA’s own Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) admitted in March that the “slip of the launch” of NASA planetary rover the Mars Science Laboratory to 2011 “significantly constrains” options for 2016 and 2018 launch, meaning the only way for NASA to win the “Will a human land on Mars before December 31, 2020?” Intertops proposition bet would be to nail every deadline until 2020 *and* plan a launch date before mid-August. (It takes about 130 days to get there, after all.)

The Os Man’s advice: Forget betting “yes” on man landing on Mars by 2021. And, despite many people’s preference for W. to become the first man on Mars (and subsequently abandoned there), there’s a reason why this prop is going off at 900/1. It’s pretty tempting to take “Extra-terrestrials land on Earth” in the “Us versus Them” bet at 14/1, but this, too, expires on December 31, 2020. Finally, the “White House walls getting painted red” at 5/1 seems credible if you believe Sarah Palin becomes president before 2020; she looks pretty good in red, after all…

Meanwhile, enjoy some virtual footage of Mars made possible by the unmanned Phoenix mission of 2008.