Humans to Mars in 20 Years or Less, NASA Chief Says By Deborah Zabarenko Reuters posted: 02:13 pm ET 08 May 2001 ET
NASA Chief Humans on Mars in 20 Years or Less
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Humans could venture to Mars in 20 years or less, NASA chief Daniel Goldin said on Tuesday, in comments that made orbital spaceflight sound positively last-century.
"We have been locked in
Earth orbit for too long, but we are going to break out," Goldin told a symposium on the 40-year history of U.S. human spaceflight.
"Let's burn into our brains that this civilization is not condemned to live on only one planet,'' he said. "Let's burn it into our brains that in our lifetimes, we will extend the reach of this human species onto other planets and to other bodies in our solar system, and build the robots that will leave our solar system to go to other stars, then ultimately to be followed by people.''
He detailed NASA's plans to launch a precision lander spacecraft toward
Mars in 2007, with Martian samples to be collected and returned to Earth between 2009 and 2011.
During the next five or six years, he said, scientists would figure out how to surmount "unbelievable health problems'' on the
"In no less than 10 -- and if we decide to do it, it could be done in 10 -- and certainly no more than 20 years, we'll start writing history again, and not looking back but looking forward," Goldin told the symposium at George Washington University.
Anniversary of human spaceflight
The occasion for his remarks was the anniversary of the first U.S. human flight into space on May 5, 1961 by Alan Shepard. He collected the NASA Distinguished Service Medal at the White House exactly 40 years ago on May 8, 1961. Shepard died in 1998.
Officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been generally wary of predicting when humans might go to Mars, Earth's next-door planetary neighbor.
At a briefing in March, Ed Weiler, head of NASA's office of space science, said upcoming robotic missions to the Red Planet aimed to check on the presence of radiation and water, two key factors that could determine whether humans might survive on Mars.
Goldin did not mention recent controversy over U.S. businessman
Dennis Tito's $20 million tourist flight to the International Space Station, but said those who fly in space, like Shepard, are "a breed apart.''
"Alan Shepard and every other astronaut who are star voyagers with the right stuff should not be thought of simply as passengers or visitors to space," Goldin said. "They are blazing a pioneering trail that will be followed once they have made the way safe."
NASA has objected to Tito's flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, saying it was premature and risked distracting the station crew. Last week, Goldin told a congressional panel that Tito was causing stress at NASA, while he praised another aspiring amateur astronaut, filmmaker James Cameron, for saying he would wait until the time was right.
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