The Case for Mars
I won't ramble on too much here, as I otherwise could. It's a huge subject to try and cover and this forum isn't really the place to be writing large tomes extolling the virtues of (or otherwise not) going there. However, I feel that with the recent discoveries of water ice just near the surface, found by Phoenix, the hydrated minerals, carbonates and other deposits that need water to form, along with all the questions that need to be asked and studied about these minerals, their geological setting and such, that it's about time we not just start to think about going to Mars at some point in the future. But that we start making solid plans, now, to go there within the next 10-20 years. It's all well and good to be thinking about going back to the Moon, and so we should. But the Moon is going to be nothing more than a way station for some foreseeable time, whereas Mars will most likely be our main port of call. Mars has far more opportunities going for it than the Moon, although the Moon will be important. There is just so much to be found and studied at Mars that the only real way you're going to get anything like decent coverage of the Martian geology, and a truly insightful appraisal of what has happened there is to send people there. You can only do so much with a robotic survey and it's rapidly approaching the time when a much more concise and in depth study is going to be needed in order to answer the questions we have. These rocks needed to be eyeballed, sampled, thin sectioned and radio-isotope dated. The geology has to be core sampled, drilled to depth and those cores studied by more discriminating eyes than just a robots. The robot explorers that we have sent up there have done a marvelous job and they will continue to do so. Even after people do finally get there. But they can only do so much. They can compliment a human being physically there, but it will be quite some time yet before technology reaches the stage where we can be entirely replaced.
Not only that, but as they say you climb a mountain just because it's there...so we need to goto Mars. We need that pioneering spirit and sense of adventure fired up again. We've become too staid, inertialess and prone to excessive navel gazing. We need to drag ourselves out of the lethargy of our present situation. What better way of creating the circumstances for co-operation amongst the various nations here than to permanently move our presence out into space. If not for exploration purposes only than for our own ultimate survival.
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