The current chairman of the Senate committee that oversees NASA authorization made the following statement.

I want to recapture the vision of John F. Kennedy’s commitment to putting a man on the moon by 1970. Today, it is not enough to endlessly circle the Earth in low orbit. NASA should set the goal of putting a person on Mars and work with Congress to set a date to do it. But the aim must be to reach Mars both safely and cost-effectively, or not at all.

Of course, he did it in the context of an overall statement that NASA must get its finances and management house in order before such a thing can be seriously contemplated. And of course, he may not be the chairman next year…

And a rerun of Apollo would be daft. Apollo set us back decades–I’d hate to think of the effect of Apollo to Mars.

[Update at 2:44 PM PDT]

Mark Whittington has some further interesting thoughts on this.