Posted by tourdemars to Humans To Mars at July 20, 2009 09:50 AM

Blasting off from Earth and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour, it takes astronauts three days to reach the moon -- a tiny distance in a universe measured in light years, but a fantastic voyage on a human scale. Now plans are under way to go back, even as the future of U.S. human space exploration is under close scrutiny and pressure is growing on NASA to aim for another alien world.