Spirit of the Lone Eagle

Jim McLane has worked for NASA’s manned space program for 20 years. In this piece Jim proposes an unconventional manned mission to Mars. His idea is basically to send a one way mission with  our current capabilities and to follow it up with evolving technologies as we can. I imagine that such a mission would largely play out in the manner Jim describes, though it’s power to unite humanity and cause it to transcend tribal rivalry’s seems  less likely than the scientific missions success. I’d support the proposal and I am sure they would have more volunteers than they could even screen if the project was funded.