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It's obvious! Were being lied to! There is a gubbermint whore cover-up. Those pictures are CHICKEN TRACKS made in the mud, the Martians let them out for a short while and then take them back to their underground cities! (excuse me, I have to change tinfoil. Things are getting fuzzy again.)

I never implied anyone actually lied to anyone. It's just that when you're dealing with the amounts of money being spent (and the jobs at stake), I feel it's perfectly acceptable to ask "Why?".

I look at this as a snowball: If someone finds water, it leads to the assumption that there may be life, in one form or another. Another vast sum of money, and many years,are spent to check this out. If life is found, the next questions are: is it life as we would understand it? Another load of taxpayer dollars and another 20 years to answer this question and so on.

Space exploration, I know has other benefits: new engineering skills and techniques, new materials, better computers and communications, etc., but what is the final purpose? Are we talking about sending people into the cosmos to live? Are we going to mine the surface of Mars for materials not available or in dwindling supply here on Earth? Are we going ot find something that justifies the huge expense and the manhours put into it or is it going to be another series of moon missions (i.e. we managed to do some really neat stuff. Now we're bored with it).

Can anyone answer these questions for me? I'm not a scientist, just some dude who is trying to understand the big picture.