Okay, not quite literally, but asking for a manned landing before 2020 is only barely different.
I’d be in favor of a manned mission to Mars next year, if Mr. Trump was the sole crew.
Damn you for making me defend Donald Trump, but I’d say that asking a NASA administrator “Can we do this?” is, in fact, different from demanding that we do. Especially when we’re talking about someone who, as we’ve seen, is perfectly capable of making actual demands (e.g. “Give me $5 billion for my Wall or I shut down the government”).
And he thinks it’s all about money as usual. Reportedly he told a NASA advisor they can get all the funds they needed so they can get to Mars before 2020. They explained how it can’t be done yet but I doubt that mattered.
Hell yeah!
Shows how little grasp he has of even the basics.
Like: it would take most of a year to get even a one-way, happy-to-die-on-Mars just-to-be-the-first-one-there one-man mission to Mars. That mission would require food, water, and oxygen for that most of a year, and of course the capsule would have to be airtight, shielded from cosmic radiation, and generally capable of protecting the human inside and his life support systems for that most of a year. Also, it would need a landing mechanism, since even landing an unmanned craft on Mars is touch-and-go. Lifting all that out of Earth gravity will require one big damn rocket; do we still have any mothballed Saturn 5 rockets, and would one of those even be big enough?
I’m sure that if he’s actually brought this up with anyone from NASA, they’ve explained this and more to him, but he’s not capable of grasping, let alone retaining, this much information.
The people who voted for this toddler should continually apologize to the rest of us. Damn, I miss having a President who had brain cells to rub together.
To be fair, Trump said this back in April 2017. And he was reportedly asking for it to happen within his first term, not before 2020.
Expecting a manned mission to Mars within a four year time frame is dumb. But it’s not quite as stupid as expecting one in eleven months. (It says a lot about Trump that I’m defending him by saying he was only dumb on this occasion.)
He might go if you show him some of Frank Frazetta’s art and tell him that he could be Emperor of Mars 
That’s the best way to interpret this particular president.
He (Trump) is so like a few of the bosses I’ve had, who think that at the point where they say “make it happen”, all the hard work has been done.
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this presidential term is out, of landing a President of the United States on Mars and return-- uh… I mean… Yeah! U-S-A! U-S-A!
We do these things not because they are hard but because they are completely impossible.
There are plenty other members of his administration that should be included.
Too bad Tom Price wasn’t still around to arrange a good flight deal.
Was it Mulvaney who has a problem with air travel?
Fast, Cheap and Good.
You can have two of three.
I wouldn’t trust him up there. He’d aim an Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator at Earth if it obstructed his view of Venus.
He’s just fucking stupid. The JFK challenge took the better part of a decade. Going to Mars is several orders of magnitude more difficult. Throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them, it’s going to take a lot of time.
It usually has for Trump. That’s why we shouldn’t elect underdeveloped toddlers to the White House. He actually doesn’t understand the difference between “get a porn star to keep her mouth shut” and “travel to a different planet and live through it”.
Aybe he would go if we told him he could rule the entire planet and all the inhabitants
To be fair, he’s clearly saying make it Fast and Good, and don’t worry about Cheap. But I think the point is that “Fast” isn’t actually an option.
Well, he produces enough crap that he ought to be able to grow a bumper crop of potatoes…
Steal it from the money that was supposed to go to Puerto Rico and Texas etc for hurricane aid???