[PatrickHenry]

The terraforming will probably be agonizingly slow measured in human lifetimes (and human patience).

I don't think terraforming Mars is practical. Not now. It will take many generations, and the cost of the missions, and maintaining the crews on Mars, will be enormous. I doubt that even a nation as rich as ours will tax itself for that, over a period of centuries, for a very distant payoff. There will come a time when it's more affordable, with faster ships and better technology than we have now, but for our generation, and the next, I just don't see it.

[RightWhale]

I imagine NASA will go about Mars wrong, just as they did Apollo. There is no urgency to land on Mars. They can build a base on Phobos and resupply it later from the surface of Mars. There should have been a base on Phobos already, and there should be regular shuttles between earth and Mars already.

Why this news of water should get NASA's exploration juices flowing right now is a mystery since they could have gone to Mars anytime in the past 20 years and water on Mars was never much of a question.