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Twenty-five years after humans first stepped onto lunar soil, a Utah scientist who helped pick Apollo landing sites says people eventually should return to the moon and colonize Mars.
"God hung the moon out there. He intended us to go there," says Richard Shorthill, a research professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah.
"It's man's destiny to know what goes on in his surroundings. A scientist can do nothing else but search out new information."
The 65-year-old researcher predicts that within a few hundred years, people will settle on Mars.
"Earth's population is going to expand, and we need to move out," he says. "There's no doubt in my mind we will."
But Shorthill -- who says he is "so Republican that I put both hands in my right pocket" -- believes the United States can't afford trips to the moon or Mars right now because of pressing needs like health care.
Shorthill is among thousands of scientists and engineers who helped America achieve its most memorable triumph in space: the July 20, 1969, landing on the moon by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and subsequent landings by other Apollo astronauts.
In addition to working on NASA's site-selection committee for the Apollo landings, Shorthill ran some...