The Frontier Program, was the largest single space program in human history until the invention of faster than light travel. First proposed as a sustained series of manned missions to Mars, the program eventually expanded to become a fifty year architecture to explore, terraform, and colonize Mars for human civilization. Planning for the program had no official beginning as a number of previous proposals were brought together to help guide the longer term development, but most agree that the official start date began in 2020, when Mariner began constructing the first Mars vehicle in Lunar orbit.