On Sunday August 5, 2012, I was among a group of people who witnessed the Rover landing on Mars in real time at NASA’s Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
The way I see it, commercial interests should manage a lunar base while NASA gets on with the really important task of flying to Mars.
Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There’s no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.
It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.
We’re being very careful that we don’t send a spacecraft to Mars with the intention of detecting Martian life – and find out that we detected the Earth life that we took with us.
We do need different types of propulsion to get to Mars. I wrote one of the first Ph.D. theses on that in the 1960s.
I think a Moon base is not necessary to get to Mars, but I think it will be helpful. It would give you a chance to develop and mature some systems; long duration, deep space stuff; and you’re close enough to get some help, via radio from Earth.
Trying to convince Warner Bros. to make a $30 million ‘Veronica Mars’ movie just wasn’t going to happen, for understandable reasons.
Globalisation means many other countries are asserting themselves and trying to take over leadership. Please don’t ask Americans to let others assume the leadership of human exploration. We can do wonderful science on the Moon, and wonderful commercial things. Then we can pack up and move on to Mars.
Mars was this water-based planet, and we know there was stable water on the surface for a long time, which is critical for life having a chance to develop.
I’m not recognized very often, and if I am, it’s a die-hard Veronica Mars fan. Which is usually flattering and an honor. I really try not to think about it.
I’d love to work with Bruno Mars and Ryan Tedder.
There are people who would love to spend their last ten years, or five years, or whatever it is, on the surface of Mars.
I like music that is upbeat, such as Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. Or anything disco – I will listen to that, too.
The story seems to be that almost every star has a planetary system… and, also, the definition of ‘habitable zone’ has expanded. In our system, it used to be that only Mars and Earth were potentially habitable. Now we’ve got an ocean on Europa… Titan.
I remember, the first time I played a parent was – I did a guest spot on ‘Veronica Mars,’ and they were like, ‘OK, and this is your daughter,’ and there’s this little girl standing there. And I remember thinking, ‘OK, this is weird… I guess I’m old enough to have a daughter.’
The life expectancy of people going to Mars may be decreased by the higher level of radiation that they receive.
I suppose we all loved those kind of sci-fi movies where terrible things came out of swamps and came to Mars. And there’s usually some poor girl. All the guys are trying to desperately handle levers and saying, go to something or other.
If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.
I suggest that going to Mars means permanence on the planet – a mission by which we are building up a confidence level to become a two-planet species.
Going to Mars would evolve humankind into a two-planet species.
President Bush’s proposal to focus our resources on sending humans to Mars is intriguing, but it is not the most compelling reason that Americans ought to focus our interest on the Red Planet.
I was a frustrated astronaut all my life. I grew up at a time when space seemed to have no boundaries, and lots of us presumed humans would be living on the moon and landing on Mars.
With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.
Planets that don’t currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitable. Tectonics might be a requirement of any world that aspires to a rich diversity of life.
Who doesn’t love Veronica Mars?
Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less.
Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers.
I used to believe there were people on Mars, and of course now we know there aren’t. Mars held particular interest. I was curious what kind of beings they would look like.
Whether it’s space tourism or really interesting missions to the moon or Mars, you really need a healthy capital ecosystem to make that happen. Nation states and governments have the control, but unless the financing is sustainable, it’s hard to really keep them on that.
I don’t think there is much value in trying to use the moon as a base to go to Mars. That’s going into one gravity belt and having to get back out of it again. And the moon doesn’t have a lot to offer as a resource base.
I am going to make singles with other artists and put those out there – I’d love to work with Bruno Mars, Drake, Kendrick Lamar. But when somebody buys a Tee Grizzley album, all they’re going to hear is Tee Grizzley.
I sent some scenes from ‘Life on Mars’… and then I didn’t hear anything for about 48 hours, and I was sure that I wouldn’t get this. Then I got a phone call saying, ‘They want you to take the role of Jim Shannon on ‘Terra Nova,’ and would I be interested!
There’s this Bruno Mars guy. I met him in Hawaii when was doing Elvis imitations at the age of about five or six years old. There’s a lot of old school in him. He’s got a depth that I just love.
I had friends in this band called Mars and they used to play a lot.
We should send a load of bad celebrities to colonise Mars. They would have to mate in space, and then their children would be sent back to Earth in 50 years’ time.
America can take man to the moon, and America can take men to Mars – and beyond.
I think we need to move to the moons of Mars and learn how to control robots that are on the surface. It’s not the impatient way of getting there, but Mars has been there a long time.
Exploring Mars is a far different venture from Apollo expeditions to the moon; it necessitates leaving our home planet on lengthy missions with a constrained return capability.
I like Bruno Mars a lot. I think he’s great.
Funding for the original manned Voyager Mars Program was scratched in 1968, before humans had gotten out of Low Earth Orbit. Mid-’60s plans for a Venus fly-by with astronauts actually flying by it met the same fate.
I personally think going to Mars, if it takes two years or two and a half years, that’s doable. Certainly, the first people who go there, that’s going to be a big motivator, being first getting to Mars.
The great earthquake shall be in the month of May; Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter, Mercury in Taurus; Venus, also Cancer, Mars in zero.
I want to be the first rock band on Mars.
If you think of the Apollo capsule coming into Earth with a parachute, the Mars atmosphere is just so thin, you’ve got to find some way of slowing yourself down really rapidly.
Venus and Mars are our next of kin: they are the two most Earth-like planets that we know about. They’re the only two other very Earth-like planets in our solar system, meaning they orbit close to the sun; they have rocky surfaces and thin atmospheres.
If you’re going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What’s the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.
I will never change. In years to come, I’ll still be that Geordie lass walking round South Shields with a battered Mars Bar!
To deliver vast new resources to humanity, we must pioneer and occupy the moon, Mars, and perhaps even beyond.
Can you imagine, in 2030, taking a space cruise on the very ship that carried the first human beings to Mars? I can’t believe that people wouldn’t line up for that possibility.
My dad and my mom convinced me to go into biomedical engineering because they said astronauts going to Mars will need life support systems.
A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.
It’s great that people are interested in Mars.
Of course, it’s a dream to go to Mars. I want to find out whether there was life there or not. And if there was, then why did it die out? What sort of catastrophe happened?
The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.
Britain should definitely be part of a Mars mission.
New Mexico was such a strange place; it was like filming on Mars.
I can remember in early elementary school when the Russians launched the first satellite. There was still so much unknown about space. People thought Mars was probably populated.
