Felix Baumgartner: Mars Mission Is A Waste of Money

Despite his incredible exploits at the edge of space, daredevil Felix Baumgartner is no fan of Mars exploration.

The skydiver made history earlier this month when he broke through the sound barrier after jumping from a balloon floating 24 miles above the Earth. But his efforts outside of our planet apparently seem to end there.

Baumgartner told the London Telegraph that instead of funding a Mars landing, the money would be better spent on environmental protection on Earth:

“[They say] 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 really bad way.”

“So 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 it does make sense.”

Baumgartner hit speeds of more than 800 mph during his 128,000 foot descent in becoming the first human to break the sound barrier in free fall.

Fearless Felix also is less-than-enthused about the estimated $2.5 billion price tag for NASA’s Curiosity Rover mission to Mars:

“That is tax money. 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 this is definitely saving our planet.”

Do you agree with Felix Baumgartner that exploring outer space is too expensive?