A spate of congressional interest in the goal of sending humans to Mars has cropped up in the past few months along with calls by space policy commentators for NASA to define a roadmap for human spaceflight. The Human to Mars Summit conference in Washington last week added to the discussion.   

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Louis Friedman is the co-founder and Executive Director Emeritus of The Planetary Society. Prior to that he was Manager of Advanced Programs and the post-Viking Mars Program at JPL.