Mars is much closer to the characteristics of Earth. It has a fall, winter, summer and spring. North Pole, South Pole, mountains and lots of ice. No one is going to live on Venus; no one is going to live on Jupiter.

I've been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear ice breaker.

Going to Mars would evolve humankind into a two-planet species.

Mars is there, waiting to be reached.

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

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.