I know: If you're looking down at Earth, you're looking through an atmosphere that has a bit of haze in many places and not just occasional clouds.

When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!

Just as Mars - a desert planet - gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.

Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.

I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars.

You need propellants to accelerate toward Mars, then to decelerate at Mars, again to re-accelerate from Mars to Earth, and finally to decelerate back at Earth. Accordingly, the mass of these required propellants, in short, drives our need for innovative launch vehicles.