Mars attracts, but did Barack Obama pick the wrong planet for a manned expedition?

President John F. Kennedy made history in the 1960s when he kicked America’s space program into overdrive, resulting in history’s first manned mission to the moon.

And US President Barack Obama wants to do something similar: launch a major expedition to an unexplored body in the solar system, jump-start a frenzy of economic and scientific activity to help get us there, and claim lots of credit for creating jobs as well as promoting science and technology.

“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time,” he wrote.

The Obama administration has been pursuing a visit to Mars for years. But Obama may be overlooking an easier target, if the arguments of one Nasa researcher and numerous supporters are to be believed. While Mars may seem like an attractive destination, we should consider sending people to Venus instead, these people argue.

Obama’s essay conjures images of Nasa habitats on the red planet as seen in the the film “The Martian.” But that future is a long way off: as the author of “The Martian” has said, it’s far more likely that NASA’s first manned Mars mission will involve humans orbiting a few times and coming back. Even Elon Musk says he’ll be creating a “cargo route” to Mars long before he sends actual people to land there.