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Before humanity sends people to Mars we would need to build a permanent base on the Moon. When it comes to water, astronauts on the ISS have a saying: yesterday's coffee is today's coffee...water is continuously recycled over there and astronauts drink recycled water for months at the time, so I do not see a real problem with drinking Martian water as long as it is safe to do so.
As for the cost, IMO space exploration is definitely not a waste of resources and there would be many potential benefits if we took space exploration more seriously. On the contrary, I can easily think of numerous examples where humanity has been continuously wasting enormous resources on - wars, shallow movies such as Fast and Furious 27, useless computer games etc...It as all about priorities and we humans do not easily give up detrimental habits.
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