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Why Mars? A Mars landing would be much less significant symbolically than the lunar landings. I think the asteroid belt has more potential for space industry. If pure science is the justification, we can get that without manned landings.

I'm pro space exploration but Mars seems like a total dead end that would siphon off resources from more productive missions.

It's really hard to get anything into orbit. Once we have climbed out of a hole, why would we want to descend into another one?

Why Mars? Because going there would build up the scince to then go to the asteroid belt which is not economical for generations to come.

Yes for pure science. I am all for spending on science and I just think private industry could do a better job of getting us to Mars and back if there was competition for a congressional prize.

I am all for a moonbase too. If we can have scientific camps in the Antartic we can have them on the moon too. My palmpilot has more calculating power than the computers that Apollo used so the Moon is way do-able.