Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

[nitpicker]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46364179

Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

By Tom Green
BBC Radio 5 Live

7 hours ago

One of the first men to orbit the Moon has told BBC Radio 5 Live that it's "stupid" to plan human missions to Mars. Bill Anders, lunar module pilot of Apollo 8, the first human spaceflight to leave Earth's orbit, said sending crews to Mars was "almost ridiculous".

Nasa is currently planning new human missions to the Moon. It wants to learn the skills and develop the technology to enable a future human landing on Mars.
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Anders, 85, said he's a "big supporter" of the "remarkable" unmanned programmes, "mainly because they're much cheaper". But he says the public support simply isn't there to fund vastly more expensive human missions. "What's the imperative? What's pushing us to go to Mars?" he said, adding "I don't think the public is that interested".
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His former crewmate, Frank Borman, who commanded the Apollo 8 mission and also spent two weeks in Earth orbit during the Gemini programme, is slightly more enthusiastic. "I'm not as critical of Nasa as Bill is," he told 5 Live. "I firmly believe that we need robust exploration of our Solar System and I think man is part of that."

But asked about the the plans of Space X founder Elon Musk and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos - who have both talked of launching private missions to Mars, Borman is less complimentary."I do think there's a lot of hype about Mars that is nonsense. Musk and Bezos, they're talking about putting colonies on Mars, that's nonsense."
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