'The Martian' author Andy Weir is less optimistic about getting to Mars than NASA

"The Martian" was reviewed on this blog.

"During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive." - IMDA

Director:Ridley Scott

Writers: Drew Goddard (screenplay), Andy Weir (book)

The book is soon to be a movie starring Matt Damon, but the book's author Andy Weir is surprisingly less optimistic than NASA about the likelihood of humans making it to Mars, "My stock answer is probably around 2050," Weir told the audience assembled at this week's Humans to Mars conference at The George Washington University.

"I know that sounds further away than most people would like to hear, but the technology necessary to get there and the costs of getting there are just very high and it's a big challenge."  This was not the timeline that NASA announced at the same conference:  NASA space agency's head, Charles Bolden, opened the conference by announcing a timeline that puts USA astronauts on Mars in the 2030s, a goal that Bolden insisted NASA is on track to meet. In response to a question, Weir told the audience that his own 2050 estimate for getting humans to Mars "might be optimistic," going on to recall that during the Apollo missions, many thought we'd be on Mars by the 1980s.

Weir supports creating a colony on Mars so that humanity can become less dependent on Earth. "I would like to have a self-sufficient colony of humans and other species somewhere other than Earth," he said. "I'm a 25-year-veteran software engineer and I think it's important to back things up."