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Originally Posted by kutulu
Humans will have to leave the Earth eventually if they wish to survive. It's best to start work on that as soon as possible. However, a trip to Mars is somewhat pointless.
Instead of spending $12B on a trip that will amount to a few days on Mars we should be spending it on making self-sustaining life possible in space. We need to facilitate gravity to avoid detrimental effects of space life first. Next we need a way to cultivate food in space. After that we need to work on fast propulsion, getting us as close to light speed as possible. As we approach that barrier, we can work on going past that barrier because that is what will make interstellar travel possible.
None of that is accomplished by going to Mars for a field trip.
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On that I'm with Ustwo. We HAVE to go to Mars - it's the test bed for all the technologies we'll use to have a permanent residence in space. We have to figure out how to get them there (months) keep them there (more months) and get them back (months) without starving them or causing them to degenerate into decalcified, muscleless masses. Baby steps. You have to start small (space station, moon, mars) before you can get big.
Where Ustwo and I disagree is the timing. Now is NOT the time to be spending billions of dollars on something that won't benefit us immediately. We have to wait until we're financially sound (read: the trickledown dinks are out of office and someone that has a sense of economics has had a chance to turn things around) until we start worrying about deep space exploration. Once that happens, I'm all for as much space exploration as we can possibly afford.