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I personally think going to Mars, if it takes two years or two and a half years, that's doable. Certainly, the first people who go there, that's going to be a big motivator, being first getting to Mars.

We're not going to get humans to Mars until at least the mid-2030s, and the world is going to change by then.

I almost feel like Mars has been taking care of me for all of these years.

When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you're there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustaining environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn't be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you're there.

We've gotta become the Martians. I'm a Martian - I tell you to become Martians. And we've gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

If humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.

It's great that people are interested in Mars.

We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars.

Every couple of years, we could dispatch people from Earth to Mars.

Perhaps the best motivation for going to Mars is political. It is obvious that no single nation currently has either the will or the resources to do it alone, but a consortium of nations and space agencies could achieve it within 20 years.