Of course we should appreciate the “past efforts” of NASA, but the taxpayers will have to cough up many billions if there is to be a manned Mars mission. The great people who achieved so much in the great days of NASA, the 60s and 70s, are long gone. NASA decided that it had to be in the manned space flight business in order to continue to get big bucks from Congress, so, it concocted its “return to the Moon” program to compete with SpaceX, apparently believing that it could not handle a Mars mission. The practical value of going back to the Moon has not been demonstrated and doing two different manned projects at the same time places a heavy burden on the taxpayers. NASA has had great success in partnership with other agencies and companies in unmanned projects like the Mars rovers and the amazing Webb Space Telescope, which took 20 years to develop but resulted in a flawless launch and deployment of an instrument which may allow us to see to the edge of the Universe. Perhaps NASA should get out of the manned spaceflight business which has not gone well for it recently and concentrate on the unmanned missions which it has carried out so well. SpaceX is now developing and launching the hardware for the Mars mission and has had great success. How about saving the taxpayers some money by creating cooperation between SpaceX and NASA rather than competition? Nostalgia for past NASA accomplishments will not get us to Mars in this decade.