Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver who broke the sound barrier after leaping from 23 miles high in the Earth's stratosphere, believes we should dive deeper into our own planet's mysteries rather than waste tax dollars on Mars.
In an interview with the Telegraph, Felix states, "A lot of guys are talking about landing on Mars. Because [they assert] it is so important to land on Mars because we would learn a lot more about our planet here, our Earth, by going to Mars which actually makes no sense to me because we know a lot about Earth and we still treat our planet, which is very fragile, in a very bad way."
During his record-breaking jump, Felix reached 833.3 mph (Mach 1.24) on his descent, and jumped from a 128,100 feet high balloon. The daredevil crushed Joseph Kittinger's record of a 19.5 mile high jump, which the American Air Force colonel set in 1960. The colonel maintained a direct line of communication with Baumgartner during the Austrian's historic jump.
Baumgartner explains, "I think we should perhaps spend all the money [which is] going to Mars to learn about Earth. I mean, you cannot send people there because it is just too far away. That little knowledge we get from Mars I don't think makes sense."
He adds, "People should decide 'are you willing to spend all this money to go to Mars?' I think the average person on the ground would never spend that amount of money-they have to spend it on something that makes sense, and that is definitely saving out planet."