So excited about the new show called MARS (and yeah, it's on National Geographic).
I watched the season premier and it was awesome!
They did this cool combination flipping between the non-fiction of the here and now on Earth in 2016 with all the plans and advances being made to go to settle Mars someday, and the fictionalized future 2033 actual voyage and colonization there.
The spaceship, rovers, colony are all pretty amazing and it seems so real like we're practically there!
Elon Musk (SpaceX) does a nice job explaining the vision and the reusable rockets they are focused on to get us cost-effectively to the Red Planet and beyond.
The imperative is clear for us becoming a true multi-planetary species, so that we drastically reduce (hopefully to zero) the risk of an extinction level event to humanity.
There was a good quote that I remember, something like:
"We go into the dark, so others can follow the light."
The leap forward of us actually making it to and colonizing Mars is so mid-boggling great that just about everything else literally pales in comparison.
Mars is just the first real step...after that the possibilities are truly endless. ;-)
(Source Photo: here with attribution to NASA Jet Propulsion Lab)
To MARS and Beyond