[Las Vegas Dave]

I wait for the day when humans explore the planet Mars!

Thanks for posting SunkenCiv!

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, we’re doing it right now — just not in person. :’) The only reason we’ve done more to explore the surface of the Moon than the surface of Mars is, we’ve had no sample return mission from Mars.

[cripplecreek]

I wait for the day when humans explore the planet Mars!

I agree. The Robots are great for what they do but they just can't match humans in speed, curiosity, intuition, intellect, etc. Humans have the desire to see what's over the horizon. We also have the ability to make instant decisions while a robot has to sit there for up to 40 minutes while it waits for a command to move a few inches.

Ideally would be a mission conducted jointly with humans and robots with the robots under direct control of the men on the surface.

The robots have really restricted us to some fairly uninteresting areas of mars. They have to land in flat places when we really need to be looking into mountains, canyons and caves.