Why Mars

Why are we sending rovers to Mars? Why do we care about Mars at all.  Here is an article...
https://www.space.com/42518-why-we-keep-going-to-mars-insight-landing.html, but it contains nothing of substance that will have a chance to improve the lives of any human.  It is all vanity and intellectual curiosity.  I take that back, it is all vanity.  Why not research our own planet, or the ocean depths. There might be something actually useful there. However, for the geniuses at NASA that isn't cool enough. 

I really love science and think that exploration is fascinating, but NASA is funded by tax payers.  

"Mars exploration missions, as do most NASA missions, can be fairly costly. For example, NASA's Curiosity rover (landed on Mars in Aug 2012) has a budget exceeding $2.5 billion. NASA also has goals of collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to conduct a mission involving returning a sample of Mars soil to Earth, which would likely cost at least $5 billion and take ten years to complete."

How can we justify this costs, which doesn't even have a potential benefit to people, when are critical long and short-term needs out there. Housing for homeless children, more judges to adjudicate immigration, crumbling schools, pollution, lack of high speed interest in rural areas, cancer, and literally thousands of other issues could really use a few billion dollars to help.  Even if the money only helped a little bit, it would still be useful.

Here are two great articles on what other people think (I googled "public opinion on going to mars" and these were the first to show up, so I wasn't picking ones that agrees with me)

Support for space exploration is extremely popular, more popular that universal healthcare. Why? Vanity!


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