If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations - as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station.

The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrenching of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency.

When a president promises something beyond his years in office, he is fundamentally unaccountable. It is not his budget that must finish the job. Another president inherits the problem, and it becomes a ball too easily dropped, a plan too easily abandoned, a dream too readily deferred.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes