Why is Russia and the USA working seperately on a Mars mission?

[Robob]

I was watching a show on the Science channel that said Russia and the U.S. are working on 2 different plans to reach Mars. Yes I know it's who can plant their flag there first. But wouldn't it make sence cost wise and the amount of time it will take to get a mission to Mars? Why can't we work together as we did for the space station?
Personally I would like to see a man or woman walk on Mars before I die. Since I was only 8 and didn't care much about the first moon landing.

[Anonymous]

Because the cold war never ended.

[jlh1988]

Boasting Rights.

They would both rather spend billions on missions to Mars and say "We were the first to wak on Mars, we're the best" etc, instead of save money and effort working as a team.

[siawa]

Becoz both are arogant. I guess they should try to do many things together being the worlds two greatest countries. Cold War Indeed. Basically the politicians dont want to have peace for the general public. Its all a game.

[ericbryce2]

The United States learned from dealing with Russia during the International Space Station construction that they can not be depended apron financially and at this time are working independently on any Mars landing programs that may be going on.
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Mankind is at least 40 years away from sending men to Mars. The logistic problems alone are staggering. A minimum of three years for a mission is expected and many problems of living off Earth have to be solved before any manned flights can ever happen. It's not physically possible to send everything a group of astronauts need for a three year trip to Mars. If water can be found there. Oxygen, water to drink, and Hydrogen for fuel can be made from it. This would greatly decrease the amount of supplies that would have to be sent.
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Right now the cost of such a program would be beyond the means of any one country and it is thought that any future Mars mission will surely be an international effort, but time will tell.
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[Crabby_blindguy]

The idea of international co-operation is good in theory. However, there are some real problems. first, its expensive. The difficulties associated with the international effort to build the ISS increased the cost considerably--and slowed the project down. Also, space exploration depends on gaining political support/funding--and that's much easier to do for a national program.

There is another, far more substantial reason to encourage, rather than discourage, competing programs. Having a single, unified program sounds good--but it sharply reduces the level of innovation and technological creativity. The reason is that a "single entity" approach necessarily eliminates the possibility of having a variety of innovators developing different apporoaches to problems and interacting with each other, learning from diverse approaches so that everyone benefits from a faster ratte of progress.