Posted on 08/07/2006 7:47:57 PM PDT by KevinDavis
WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said the U.S. space agency would begin a formal assessment in 2007 of potential approaches for sending humans to Mars, but that he did not foresee astronauts embarking on a journey to the red planet for another 20 years or longer.
“I don’t want to leave my term of office without having done at least a preliminary Mars architecture,” Griffin said, noting that the preliminary planning effort would begin next year. Actually sending astronauts to Mars, under NASA’s current plans, would not happen until after the agency leads the way back to the Moon, an objective NASA hopes to accomplish by no later than 2020. Because of that, Griffin said, he would not expect the first human Mars expedition to begin until at least “the late 2020s.”
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
I was 15 when the Eagle landed, and hopefully will still be around at 75 to see the Phoenix land on Mars.
We could have been there by now if we had not lost focus and chased visions of space stations in the sky for all these years instead of setting up moon bases.
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