NASA's Plan To Colonize/Settle Mars

Reader note: “Jesco von Puttkamer is by far the most popular NASA official here in Germany, perhaps less so in the U.S. Now he’s visiting a German state which has put out an exuberant press release: – here we learn that he is going to give a talk about “das Vorhaben der amerikanischen Weltraumbehoerde NASA, den Planeten Mars zu besiedeln”, which translates roughly as “the intention of the American space agency NASA to colonize the planet Mars”. Wondering where “the vision” is heading these days? Here you have it, from a NASA guy’s own mouth …”

Editor’s note: I ran this through Babelfish and got “the project of the American space authority NASA to settle the planet Mars”. Either way it sounds like a rather fanciful leap beyond the scope of the VSE – especially given how hard it is for NASA just to do “Apollo on Steroids” – and to get back to the Moon 50 years after we last went there.