"He's promising a trillion-dollar tax cut and a trip to Mars... and he has a half-trillion-dollar deficit, " said Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.
Would you be willing to make a trip to Mars?
CNN: Mars on the brain? Red Planet pioneers to face cosmic mind trip
The George W. Bush-era Constellation project, for instance (later cancelled by Mr Obama), was supposedly going to be a return mission to the moon followed by a trip to Mars.
These habitats, which are folded up for launch and then inflated in space, were designed as interplanetary vehicles for a trip to Mars, but they are also likely to be useful general-purpose accommodation.
ECONOMIST: The Americans may still go to the moon before the Chinese
President Bush's plans for a return to the moon in 2020, with a trip to Mars to follow, were all well and good, but now NASA has finally fleshed out the details of the moon visits, and it seems a permanent international moon base is in the cards.
Astronauts would then travel to the asteroid where "there could be mining activities, research into ways of deflecting an asteroid from striking Earth and testing to develop technology for a trip to deep space and Mars, " it said.
While it may not sound as epic as a manned trip to the Moon or to Mars, the horizons for science and technology will be expanding in 2017.
If humans ever do go to asteroids or Mars, the scale of the infrastructure needed to complete a safe round trip could not possibly be launched on a single rocket from Earth.
The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science, based on data from a device called the Radiation Assessment Detector that took readings during Curiosity's trip to Mars.
Professor Longuski discovered that the safest route to take would be one that permitted a quick return trip, via Venus, in case of an accident that forced the Mars landing to be aborted.
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