Today, President Obama called for sending humans to Mars. Let’s hope that his successor acts to make that vision a reality.To be serious, the next president needs to make the goal to be to get to the Red Planet before the end of her or his second term. This can be done.
From a technical point of view, we are much closer today to sending humans to Mars they we were to sending men to the Moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Saying we can’t do it again amounts to conceding that we have become less than the people we used to be, and that is a concession we cannot afford.
The next president should take up the challenge and get it done. Leaving it to a successor to do is not the way to make it happen.
— Dr. Robert Zubrin, Mars Society President
CNN opinion piece about humans-to-Mars by President Barack Obama