Where No Man Has Gone Before? (Not Exactly) by Hank Silverberg (Friendship7 launch, NASA photo) On February 20, 1962, John Glenn lifted off in Friendship 7 from Cape Canaveral. His three orbits around the Earth was a seminal event for the Boomer generation. We watched the progress of the Mercury and Gemini programs from then on, often on TV and in the classroom, with focused fascination. As the space program moved into Apollo and the Moon landings throughout the late 60's and 70's, we firmly believed that humankind would be on Mars early in the 21st century. This was reinforced by popular media such as Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek and Robert Heinlein's The Martian Chronicles. As the Cold War ended, and with it the national security implications of space travel, interest from the public waned. After the Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) disasters and the deaths of our heroes, the 14 astronauts on board the two space crafts, we reassessed whether space travel was to...