Mission to Mars

That is something that should have happened a long time ago, but in the forty years since the moon landing, America has entered into a period of navel gazing that seems to have precluded the type of vision that led us to outer space, for, as this article by George Weigel notes, "God made us for adventure and discovery."

An excerpt.

“On this anniversary, it's also worth reflecting on why we stopped pushing out into space and what that's meant. At the height of the space race, it was simply assumed that, after conquering the Moon (and perhaps building a permanent base there), there would be a Mars mission, which was thought doable by the end of the 20th century, if not earlier. Yet Congress decreed that we stop exploring the Moon with Apollo 17; we can't get back with the equipment we have now; Mars remains an unfocused dream; and the next men on the Moon (or beyond) could be Chinese.

“The lowness of another low decade, the 1970s, had something to do with America's failure to keep pushing the outside of the envelope in space, I suspect. As in the spiritual life, so in public life: if we look down, or look around, but don't look up, the human spirit withers a bit. After a season of withering, we find it difficult to imagine ourselves as creatures called to transcend ourselves. So we turn inward, become self-absorbed, and end up, like contemporary Europe -- trapped in a crisis of civilizational morale, unable to summon the moral energy to create future generations.

“God made us for adventure and discovery. Abandoning the great adventure of manned space exploration was a serious mistake, for America and for the human future.”