Anyone else watching the Nat Geo series Mars? Up until quite recently I argued we didn’t need a manned Mars program right now. We could explore Mars with much less risk and expense by continuing to send robots. But politically, we just took two giant steps backwards into the 1930s with the election of Donald Trump, despite all of the progress humanity has made in recent decades. I no longer have confidence that humans are rational enough to not wreck this planet, which makes it imperative that we establish a breeding population of humans on Mars as soon as possible.