the only thing on mars is dirt, if i wanted dirt i'd take a shovle and dig a hole in my yard *reaches down and picks up shovle and bucket*
when i see a "martian" land his ship on my yard i may belive in them as far as the moon landings thats before my time and there for none of my concern
to be frank i don't care if they go into orbit or land on mars i'm perfectly content right here on earth
am i curious about space yeah thats human nature but i'll stay here and read about it

Well, they could always build sand castles on Mars Arton; presuming that they actually found some water .

"They're already saying that the probe landers are faked! "

I think they probably are.

..fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant..

Curmudgeon, luddite, skeptic, cynic .....

*walks off in search of thesaurus*

Old man...

lol
yeah esq they could do that
or set there cat loose

what colour is the sky in my world? black black black tinged with a hint of grey...

so it's just an expression of an honest desire to explore, is it? part of pushing forward and searching out the new? taming the new frontier? to boldy go blah blah blah..

C R A P - you've been watching too much ST: Enterprise then, sunbeam.

it's either oil/minerals/weapons/technology. And the Moon's just a staging post to get there. And yes now you mention it it's q possible that the CIA sabotaged Beagle (a concept I hadnt even considered until you mentioned it, thx!)

who the hell is John Ashcroft? isn't he my local insurance man? (i don't know many contemporary American public figures, they're all instantly forgettable apart from Condoleeza Rice [sp? because she sounds like something you'd order for dessert)

Oh no, Taw's started rambling. Doctor, quick! Cut back his dosage!

it's better than that Esq, last night I was having full-on hallucinations! (bats)

..fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant..

so taw, do you think it's just some kind of noble dream? it's not a bad or unethical decision to want to advance? actually, i'm going to stop there, before i become a modernist and start spouting how humans are advancing towards perfection, like in "Brave New World", which isn't really perfection

noble dream? not in the slightest, that's just how they dress it up for public consumption - rhetoric and romantic hot air.

..fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant..

"full-on hallucinations!"
and i thought i was messed up *twitches*

@Ugnaught
You really think that if the US sent people out into space and they left them to die that the space exploration projects would be more popular? And why explore the vast vacuum of space? There is far more to see and study beneath the oceans yet we know so comparatively little about it. The reason is that sending a bunch of scientists away in submarines or with scuba gear isn't half as glamourous or romantic as a huge rocket billowing fire leaving the planet.
Yet what will affect us most? Information that might help us accurately predict the timing and effects of El Nino/Nina or whether or not Mars had water 3 billion years ago?
Landing a human on the surface of Mars is nowhere near the top of the list of priorities in the world right now. Nor have you explained why a human must be sent out to Mars. What's so special about a human being? They can't see in infra-red or conduct mass-spectrometry on a rock sample, they have soft, fragile bodies and need oxygen, water and food to run. I can understand why men were sent to the moon in the 60s, there wasn't the technology required to build a robot capable of landing on the moon and take samples, photograph things etc, but now with the technology available to us, why not use it?

Have you ever heard about the Living Universe foundation? It's a big group of scientists that develops technologies to turn the world into a better place, and after they will have done it they will use them to spread the seed of humanity through the Universe.