Over five decades after humans were sent to the moon, the nearest celestial body to Earth, the original plan remains: to go to Mars. It is something a lot of astronauts who have gone to space thought should have already been accomplished.
In December 2019, the first African American woman in space, Mae Jemison, told university students at the Kennedy Space Center for Complex she just assumed, by the time she got to be "old enough to go into the space program, you know we'd be living on Mars," or she'd be working on the Red Planet just as a scientist.
However, according to USA TODAY, despite the fact "humankind has been unable to send anyone to another place in the universe other than the moon," there are still a lot of those who have hopes and expectations "that we will become a multi-planetary species in the near future," beginning with what she called "our red next-door neighbor."
Billionaire business owners like Elon Musk, for one, as well as aspiring young astronauts including Alyssa Carson for one, a Florida Tech sophomore studying at Florida Tech, are hoping to live on Mars one day.
The Problem
Carson explained to part of USA Today Network, Florida Today, eventually, "the sun will run out of fuel to burn," and conditions on Earth will be quite different from the regular life humans spend at present.
It is not essentially saying, "Mars is the savior here," the young astronaut continued. However, the Red Planet, she said, is that initial step to get people slightly more adapted to even thinking about breathing or residing on other planets and "being able to colonize someplace else."
Even SpaceX, Musk's aerospace firm, has the ultimate goal of allowing people to live on other planets, its website indicates. But how possible is that? Do humans really want to settle on a planet where they cannot even breathe?
According to Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, there is an available technological capability to fly to Mars. The problem "is money, or lack thereof," he elaborated.
High Cost
As part of the Space Policy Directive 1, US President Donald Trump tasked NASA with sending the next man and first-ever woman to the moon by 2024 and then, eventually, head on to Mars.
However, this is not the first time a national leader has said humans are going back to the moon or are finally sending some to Mars.
Following John F. Kennedy's first declaration that a man would be put on the moon, several other presidents have attempted to follow in his footsteps.
However, unlike Kennedy, none have come near success. On Apollo 11's 20th anniversary in 1989, President George HW Bush said humans would go back to the moon, then move on to Mars. However, in the end, the cost was proven quite high.
His son, then-President George W. Bush, echoed a similar objective. Under the Constellation program, the plan was to go back to the moon by 2020 and eventually head on to Mars. However, the project was eventually terminated following a series of postponements and increasingly high costs.
Former President Barack Obama hoped to go to Mars too. Instead of recommending going back to the moon, though, he said astronauts should be sent to an asteroid by 2025 before heading for Mars. Just the same, the proposal was rejected by the Congressional Republicans, and none of the ideas materialized.
Check out more news and information on Mars on Science Times.
