I'm John Thatcher. This is Hotel Mars episode, Ann. David Livingston is here, Dr. Space,

and we're very pleased to speak to David Southwood, British space scientists, and our guide on the

Mars sample return. Professor Southwood, I give you an unlimited budget. What do you want to achieve

with Mars sample return?

What would be satisfied?

Well, the first thing is never give anyone an unlimited budget.

That actually leads to delays simply because what happens is you keep adding, you keep thinking

of more and more things you can do.

And so you end up building this enormous Christmas tree and it takes longer and

longer to pull it together.

So really you should say, I give you 12 billion, how fast can you do it?

You really need that constraint.

I speak with bitter experience of space engineering.

Yes, well, at the moment, birds in the hand are so much better than birds in the bush,

and we have birds in the hands. So number one priority, my view is to use the work that's been done

on the surface of Mars by perseverance and the scientific teams down on Earth in selecting material.

And I would say get those back in as good time as you can.

And the more money you spend, the faster you can get them back.

That's the first thing I would get people looking at is getting the stuff from the surface.

I'm fairly sure we can the stuff from the surface.

I'm fairly sure we can land things on the surface, including the rocket to take off.

It's that rocket, though.

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