[RightWhale]

Save out 10,000 of the richest asteroids for mining and crash the rest onto Mars and the moon. There's a lot more material in the solar system than civilization can use, so let's make up a couple more habitable planets before we take off for neighboring star systems.

Concerning the water ice on Mars: NASA ought to reconsider why it wants to send men to Mars. What are we going to do when we get there?

[PatrickHenry]

NASA ought to reconsider why it wants to send men to Mars. What are we going to do when we get there?

NASA is going to Mars because they can't think of another project, and a bureaucracy must keep busy or -- horrors! -- it's out of business. When we get there? There will automatically be a further mission for NASA, which is keeping the colony alive with ever-bigger NASA budgets. Unless we discover something enormously valuable there, it's just not economically sound to go. Not now. Well, I guess they could always try to sell bottled Martian water ...