Human beings have yet to walk on Mars' face, and it isn't for lack of smarts.

"It is not the technology to go to Mars or other planets or back to the moon," former Utah senator and space traveler Jake Garn said Saturday. "The problem is funding. I am convinced we could be on Mars now, be there sometime from 2005-2010, if the funding had been approved by Congress."

Garn and about a half-dozen astronauts and cosmonauts are in the middle of a five-day meeting in Salt Lake City to prepare for the Association of Space Explorers' annual Planetary Congress, to be held here in October.

Garn said the U.S. funding for food stamps last year was more than double NASA's budget.

Were that not the case, manned trips to Mars would be a reality, Garn said. His fellow space travelers agreed, convinced that the milestone is in mankind's near future.

"I think it's about time to get bold support behind President Bush's goal to go back to the moon and Mars," Austrian Franz Viehbok said. He said that once, when asked whether humans will have been to Mars by century's end, he replied, "What an embarrassment if we have not."

Russia's Alexei Leonov, who became the first person to leave a spacecraft and "walk" in space on March 18, 1965, agreed that the time is now.

"In 1987, in the (Planetary) Congress, we discussed the question of flight to Mars," Leonov said through an interpreter Saturday. "This was so long ago. There was lots of interesting reports, but it was very early for this discussion. The people weren't ripened to talk about this. Now we see a different situation. All continents are discussing the possibility of flights to Mars."

Leonov credits the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which he said "have gotten us another step closer.

"This woke up everyone on Earth about the possibility of Mars exploration. Somehow Mars has become closer, closer for the leaders of countries who help finance this possibility. You can see now that this is a realistic discussion."

Leonov said space experts now have experience with long space flights and the technology for long-term life support in space.

Space travel does more than fulfill mankind's curiosity about space, the group agreed, making moot the question, "Why would we waste so much money in space?"

"We have never wasted a dime in space. There are no stores in space. All the money has been spent on Earth," Garn said. The result, he said, benefits business, creates jobs and spawns technology that can be used for health, travel and a host of other everyday benefits.

When the Planetary Congress convenes in October, they plan to pool their knowledge through a series of technical sessions and seminars. They also want to spread the excitement to Utahns with a community outreach day that they hope will see an astronaut or cosmonaut visit every school district in the state.