The Astronaut Who Might Actually Get Us to Mars

#TIA – Just where you haven’t expected to find the astronaut who might take us to Mars. 

We like to tell stories—often in blockbuster films and children’s books—that dramatize a direct path from the initial spark of an idea to its realization. Decades of hard work and failed attempts are condensed into a brief montage that concludes with triumph. Thomas Edison thought electricity could illuminate the world, so he developed the lightbulb. John Atanasoff was frustrated by the limitations of late-twenties calculators, so he devised his own and soon followed it up with the first electronic digital computer. President Kennedy said we’d go to the moon, so we poured money and manpower into a rocket, and Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind.

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