In a comment on my post about the "Face on Mars," Foxnews reader "DocZen" asks:

When are we actually *going* to Mars?

Is the current lull in space exploration just that, or did we just look at Apollo as a big waste of time/money?

The way I see it, technology has been riding the advances we made during those years, and has really progressed little in my eyes...

We should look at going to Mars not as a proposition in and of itself, but as a way to experiment with new technologies, and get them into our living rooms (and pockets!)

What is it with current NASA administration, anyway? They're so afraid to make space travel 'cool' that it almost hurts. Open up space travel to tourists. Bring back the days when we looked up to our astronauts, as now they are nameless, faceless scientists.

The WWII generation went to the moon, no offense, but the baby boomers spent too much time smoking pot and protesting...what is *MY* generation going to do with its time on earth?

In other words: "where the hell is my flying car?" :]

I'm printing the comment, because I think his questions and feelings are shared by many people.

Right out of the box, I'll say that I don't pretend to have an answer to the question of when we will send people to Mars. Predictions are always hazardous, particularly about the future. Of course, almost no one would have predicted in July, 1959 that men would be walking on the moon a decade later. I also have to confess to not seeing this as an urgent thing, at least until we get our other space affairs in order.

Space enthusiasts tend to see the Apollo program as the Golden Age, the paradigm of how a space program Should Be, and how it Could Be if only we got another President with the vision of JFK.

This is a myth. Recently-discovered documents indicate that Kennedy wasn't particularly interested in space--as I described a couple of weeks ago, he only pursued Apollo as a response to the embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Gagarin flight.

Now, he tells Webb that beating the Russians to the moon "is the top priority of the agency and ... except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. .... Otherwise, we shouldn't be spending this kind of money, because I'm not that interested in space."

If by some political miracle (and that's truly what it would take) we were to initiate a Mars program today, I believe that it would put us even further off track than Apollo did. We weren't really ready to go to the Moon in 1961, and it would be premature to set off to Mars in 2002.

I don't mean this in the sense of technical feasibility--clearly we were capable of sending men to the Moon in the sixties, and just as clearly we could send men (and women) to Mars today (or at least initiate an ultimately-successful program to do so) if we chose to.

What I mean is that by jumping to a grand goal before the technology has matured, we would bypass some critical steps in making it practical and affordable. We first stepped on the Moon in 1969. We last did so only three years later, almost thirty years ago. We haven't been back because in our hurry, we didn't lay the groundwork for a politically or economically-sustainable program.

In fact, NASA Administrator James Webb was very concerned about this at the time, but couldn't get Kennedy to accept it as important.

On the tape, Webb tells Kennedy that some of the nation's top space scientists doubt whether it is possible to send humans on a lunar voyage. "There are real unknowns about whether man can live under the weightless environment," he says. Committing to a manned lunar landing, Webb tells the president, could leave the country vulnerable to failure. Instead, Webb insists, landing on the moon should be only part of a broad effort by NASA to understand the space environment and its effects on human beings.

Webb's tone in confronting the nation's chief executive is fearless. Historian John Logsdon of George Washington University says Webb "must have felt very strongly about this," adding that there had been a running feud at NASA Headquarters about how much importance Apollo should have.

But Kennedy stands firm, telling Webb that the moon landing is NASA's top priority. " This is, whether we like it or not, a race?. Everything we do [in space] ought to be tied into getting to the moon ahead of the Russians."

I think that, considering these new facts, and our stasis for the past three decades, relative to what was envisioned and possible, it's time to lay to rest John F. Kennedy as the template for the ideal president to lead us into space.

And in fact, it's a mistake to expect any President to both have that kind of vision, and the political support to implement it. It might happen, but it's extremely unlikely (since it never really even happened the first time).

But if I can't say when we'll go to Mars, I can describe some of the conditions that will have to be in place before such a thing is likely to occur. And that's what I'll do in a post in the near future.

Of course the lesson is that a space program born of politics can also die of it.

Now I don't think that the truncation of Apollo and the thirty plus year stasis which followed was inevitable. In fact I just published an alternate history novel, entitled Children of Apollo, which suggests how things might have happened otherwise. (Hint: Just as JFK used the Cold War as an impetus, Nixon uses furthering detente as one-or at least pretends to. (g))

Nevertheless, I think your points are well taken. An all out drive to Mars, as sexy as it would seem, is not the panacea. I think O'Keefe is doing things just about right, so far as he has gone. Once NASA's books are in order, we can think of using the agency as a tool for opening up the high frontier of space.

2030.

See, it doesn't hurt.

Wow, thanks for taking the time to bring your expertise and expirience to bear on my questions!

You bring up great points and concerns, but allow me to re-focus my argument just a tad:

I don't mind if the projected date for maned Mars exploration is 2050 or 2150, just set a goal! If it *is* 2150, public and political pressure will take over and will open a dialogue between NASA and the powers that be (probably even change some of those powers that be from the anemic over-political Nasa admins. to some real science guys who really want to get things done). Even better, it will foster a set of expectations to come about, which will allow us as taxpayers to see some progress vis a' vis our tax dollars.

They've got the space station up there floating around, it's supposed to be the first hop on the way to Mars. All I'm saying is make it known that it is such! NASA seems to be following the argument that if they never state long-term goals, they'll never look like failures.

I say if you're going to fail, fail *out loud*, but pick up and carry on. Never fail out of a lack of concrete goals.

Apollo was a golden age of something...if not space exploration. I liken the Apollo missions to the Norse visiting Greenland and what is now Newfoundland in the first millenium. We believe they used vastly under "powered" equipment, just like the Apollo guys. Equipment that we today look at and wonder how they pulled it off.

Just like the Apollo lander, with the computing power of your average abacus on No-Doze, they used sheer determination, not an overabundance of "mature" technology to get to their goals.

We, as "Europeans" didn't go back for hundreds of years, the knowlege was lost and we had to start over, this time with rickety scurvey-laden voyages in wooden ships.

I say we should *not* forget the spirit of adventure and nationalism that got us to the moon. If it's going to take us 30, 50, or 100 years to get to Mars, let's do the logistics and get to it.

Lastly, I believe that capitalism is the key here. Once we figure out how businesses can make money in space (and I don't mean orbiting billboards), we won't have to worry, as cold, evil calculating capitalism will take over and we won't have to worry about NASA :]