I participated with great honor in becoming one of the first to land on the moon, and now I am devoting and have devoted many years of my life to enabling Americans to lead international nations to permanence on the planet Mars.

Weve got to go [back to the moon]. But we dont want to stay too long. ... The ultimate goal is Mars.

There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that are not just ones for immediate short-term comfort. You need to make an investment, and the investment is in health and education.

Mars, we know, was once wet and warm. Was it home to life? And what can living and learning to work on its rust-colored surface teach us about the future of our own planet, Earth? Answering those mysteries may hold the key to our future.

Anything we can do in the near future that begins to stimulate the interest of people - seeing somebody down the street have an opportunity to go into space - buoys up the whole neighborhood.

In my mind, public space travel will precede efforts toward exploration -- be it returning to the moon, going to Mars, visiting asteroids, or whatever seems appropriate. We've got millions and millions of people who want to go into space, who are willing to pay. When you figure in the payload potential of customers, everything changes.

You can never tell when a commercial space venture will suddenly become viable.