Former NASA astronaut believes sending humans to Mars would be ‘stupid’

While different firms are planning to send people to Mars, an astronaut, who is also one of the first men to orbit the moon, believes that it is just ‘stupid’.

Bill Anders, lunar module pilot of Apollo 8 – the first human spaceflight to leave Earth’s orbit – told BBC Radio 5 Live, that sending humans to Mars was ‘almost ridiculous’.

Anders said that he, although, is a ‘big supporter’ or the ‘remarkable’ unmanned programs ‘mainly because they are much cheaper’, but also said that the public support is just not there to fund a greatly more expensive human missions.

“What’s the imperative? What’s pushing us to go to Mars? I don’t think the public is that interested,” said Anders.

NASA criticized for ‘not doing enough’ about planetary protection

Anders also criticized NASA on the way it has evolved since his time. The former astronaut said, “NASA couldn’t get to the moon today. They’re so ossified … NASA has turned into a jobs program. Many of the centers are mainly interested in keeping busy and you don’t see the public support other than they get the workers their pay and their congressmen get re-elected.”

Back in December 1968, Anders, along with crewmates Frank Borman and Jim Lovell completed 10 orbits around the moon before returning back to Earth. At that time, this was the furthest humans had ever traveled from their home planet and seven months later, Apollo 11’s historic moon landing took place.

Borman, on the other hand, told the radio station that he strongly believe that we need exploration of the solar system and ‘man is part of that’. However, he had different opinion when talked about SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and their plans to develop Mars colonies, calling them ‘nonsense’.

“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.”

These comments comes in when NASA is currently planning to send humans to moon again to learn skills and develop technology for enabling a future human landing on the Red Planet.

Today also marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission and when they captured the famous 'Earthrise' picture that showed Earth rising above the lunar landscape. Until that point, no human eyes had ever seen the blue planet from so far away, wrote Business Insider.