The United States should focus on a human mission to Mars, and partner with China in reaching the Red Planet, a new study of the U.S. space program found. Currently, the national space program in America has a "flexible approach" to human missions beyond Earth orbit. 

The National Research Council report was initiated by NASA, in an effort to plan the next generation of interplanetary human missions. The report promotes the idea of a series of smaller missions, building technical know-how and testing equipment that would be needed for a journey to Mars. 

The International Space Station will be used as a stepping stone to space, in ideas detailed in the new report. 

In 2012, NASA determined a new strategic direction was needed to develop a national consensus on the future of the American space program. An ad hoc committee was assembled to look into the future of space travel.

"The committee determined that, only with a national consensus on the agency's future strategic direction -- along the lines described in the full NRC report -- can NASA continue to deliver the wonder, the knowledge, the national security and economic benefits, and the technology that have been typified by its earlier history," the National Research Council wrote in 2012. 

Two years later, the group is offering its findings to NASA and the American public. 

"Pronouncements by multiple presidents of bold new ventures by Americans to the moon, to Mars, and to an asteroid in its native orbit have not been matched by the same commitment that accompanied President Kennedy s now fabled 1961 speech.... Are we still committed to advancing human spaceflight? What should a long-term goal be, and what does the United States need to do to achieve it?" the group wrote in the latest report. 

A series of tasks like those needed to send humans to Mars would require unprecedented international cooperation, the report concludes. This would entail partnering with the space program of China. Such technological ties between the American space effort and Beijing are currently forbidden by federal law. That country is not one of the 15 members of the International Space Station. 

The report stated "Given the rapid development of China's capabilities in space, it is in the best interests of the United States to be open to its inclusion in future international partnerships." 

The financial costs of a mission to Mars were not calculated in the study. However, the authors stated their belief that the American public would support a more active space program, as they did during the Apollo mission. Those flights to the moon cost about $20 billion, equivalent to more than $120 billion today.