Of presidents and planets

摘要

What do you think President Barack Obama's science legacy will be? It's too soon to tell, but he is certainly a scientifically literate person. He understands the value of science in our culture and, more importantly, for our civilisation. One of my key memories of Obama was a comment he made in 2010 during a speech at Kennedy Space Center. He said the US would go to Mars - and that he wanted to do it by the mid-2030s. I found it curious that he was promising something that would happen under the watch of a later president, under a budget not yet established. That speech cemented for me that, if we are going to go to Mars, or into space in a big way, then we need to elect people who will honour that promise.