Humanity has long been dreaming to personally visit the Red planet. This is a large-scale training and now are modeled and planned various options of how to do it. However, such enthusiasm is not shared by all. For example, bill Anders, one of the first people involved in the missions to the moon, the BBC said that sending crews to Mars — is a “ridiculous and stupid idea”.
Bill Anders (full name William Alison Anders) in the crew of “Apollo 8”, which also included astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, launched from Cape Canaveral Dec 21 1968. It was the first manned launch three-stage rocket “Saturn-5”. Flight to the moon was a little more than 66 hours. Going to lunar orbit, the ship made 10 flybys around Earth satellite, and then went back. At that time it was the most distant place in space which could reach humanity. This record was beaten only by landing on the moon “Apollo-11”.
Now the former astronaut is pretty cool comments on the evolution of NASA after the promise of President John F. Kennedy to land a man on the moon.
“Today’s NASA would not be able to reach the moon. They are very stiff… NASA has become an employment program… in addition, they receive a salary, and their congressmen are re-elected.”
Anders is also critical of the decision to focus on the exploration of low-earth orbit after completion of the program “Apollo” in the 70-ies and regards the Space Shuttle program a “grave mistake”.
Talking to reporters, the air force, Mr. Anders said that sending crews to Mars — is “ridiculous.” One of the first people who visited from far off Lands is not to say that we should not seek to know the next planet. We’re just moving in the wrong direction. Mr. Anders believes that we need to first create the necessary technology that allows people in the future to land on Mars, but to explore the planet while it is possible and without personal presence.
“What pushes us to fly to Mars? I don’t think the public is strongly interested. Meanwhile, robotic probes quite successfully exploring Mars.”
Bill, by his own admission, is a big fan of unmanned programs because they, quote, “much cheaper”. He believes that, in contrast to the program “Apollo”, now simply there is no such level of support in order to Fund more expensive mission with people.
Not left without attention of bill Anders’s ambitious plans Elon musk and Jeff Bezos on the colonization of Mars, saying that around these plans, “too much hype”, but the ideas are called “nonsense”, again citing the lack of necessary technologies.
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