\n\n\n" }I\u00e2\u0080\u0099m in no mood to keep my mouth shut any longer when I see NASA heading down the wrong path. And that\u00e2\u0080\u0099s exactly what I see today. The \u00c2\u00adagency\u00e2\u0080\u0099s current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the moon by 2020--a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago. Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA\u00e2\u0080\u0099s current lunar plan is a detour. It will derail our Mars effort, siphoning off money and engineering talent for the next two decades. If we aspire to a long-term human presence on Mars--and I believe that should be our overarching goal for the foreseeable future--we must drastically change our focus.
\nHere\u00e2\u0080\u0099s my plan, which I call the Unified Space Vision. It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s a blueprint that will maintain U.S. leadership in human spaceflight, avoid a counterproductive space race with China to be second back to the moon, and lead to a permanent American-led presence on Mars by 2035 at the latest. That date happens to be 66 years after Neil Armstrong and I first landed on the moon--just as our landing was 66 years after the Wright Brothers\u00e2\u0080\u0099 first flight.
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