Dale Bumpers: “NASA's present strategic plan is based on the future human operation of Mars and its eventual colonization, with…”

“NASA's present strategic plan is based on the future human operation of Mars and its eventual colonization, with projected costs of at least many tens of billions, or perhaps more realistically, hundreds of billions. I want to thank Professor Levinthal for sending that to me because I could not agree with him more. As I said this morning, Carl Sagan corrected me the year before last when I said he was opposed to the space station. I stood corrected. What he said was that the space station had some merit as a weigh station to go to Mars, but to justify the space station on the grounds of medical experimentation was shaky indeed. Now, I have the utmost respect for Carl Sagan. He was a much revered person around here. But I disagree with him about going to Mars. It is not necessary to have a manned mission to Mars in order to explore Mars. We have already discovered that. I complimented NASA this morning on sending the Mars Pathfinder rover to Mars, which is doing a tremendous amount of research that may or may not be beneficial to us.”