Do we really always need these anymore? </s>
We have proven that mars consists of rocks and dirt. Other than the answer to the question “Did life evolve on mars?” There really isn’t anything very interesting there. And I have a clue about that I’m sharing right now. Back to. Earths early history the banded iron formations were laid down. The accepted origin of these is oxygen produced by photosynthetic bacteria reacted with the iron dissolved in the primordial oceans to produce red iron oxide. Mars has a great deal of iron oxide - hint red rust. WHERE DID THE OXYGEN COME FROM that generated the red iron oxide on Mars? I guess that there is a reasonable likelihood it was produced the same way on Mars as on earth.
Other than the answer to this question there isn’t anything on Mars that’s worth the cost of going there. Especially not worth sending manned missions. I know this is blasphemy to the FR space kadets, but the South Pole is much more hospitable and one hell of a lot of cheaper to get to and I don’t see anyone lining up to colonize Antarctica (AND Antartica has air you can breathe) unlike Mars’ atmosphere which is 0.6% of Earth’s
So put those resources into rooting out illegal aliens and shipping them back to where they came from