For those who do not know him, Dr. Robert Zubrin is an aerospace engineer and author who has been championing the cause of a manned mission to Mars for the last 35 years. In this excerpt from a talk he gave last year (which is now going viral on Reddit ), Dr. Zubrin delivers a brilliant answer when someone asks him – “Why should we go to Mars?”

I’m not trying to oversell this, but his reasoning is strong enough to pump you up about space exploration. Remember the things you hear in this short 4-minute video, for years from now we’ll either be talking about it thinking this was the speech that made all the difference, or we’ll say it in a regretful tone – “we should have listened to this man.”

Check out the complete answer.

You can read the entire text of the speech here .