Do you guys think public sentiment is such that people feel the risk of dying is far less than the risk of not going to Mars? 

Does a majority of society feel further outer space exploration is worth dying for

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I don’t think this is a good way of phrasing this. I wouldn’t die for space travel, but there will never be a shortage of exceptional people who would, and we should support and respect those people as much as we can

Some might argue there is a shortage of these people, because everyone adopts your attitude of “not me” and assumes someone else will

There’s a long history of people doing this and becoming an astronaut is very competitive?

I believe to some degree people don’t associate it with risk anymore. There is not the implicit understanding that people will have to die to make space progress. The Columbia happened over 20 years ago. A student entering college today will have no living memory of the risk of space