I didn’t say we don’t need to explore space. We do. I asked why do you want to put a man on Mars. No good answer–except for gopher’s humorous one–has been offered beyond the “we are humans and we can, therefore we should.” Someone even went boldly so far as to say there is no other reason necessary.

Therefore, I leave today still genuinely curious.

If you are not too busy Phil, I’d love to hear from you.

- Jack

I’ll add on to what JanieBell said…

In addition to the human spirit of exploration – humans can do things no robots will be able to do in the forseeable future. Namely, be creative, adjust to rapidly changing circumstances, and completely change the parameters of the mission should new information crop up. Basically, while we can send robot after robot to Mars they are all limited in what they can do. A human is not. A human on the ground with support of people on earth is far more likely to notice something truly interesting and be able to respond to it than a robotic rover is.

Also, our planet WILL become hostile to human life at some point. It may not be for a very long time but it will eventually happen. Walking on another planet and getting home safely is the very first baby step to leaving this planet when it becomes neccesary to do so – just as the first reed rafts on the Nile 10,000 years ago were the first baby steps to ocean going passenger ships. You gotta start somewhere and Mars is far enough to be hard yet close enough to be do-able, and ineresting enough to be worthwhile with existing technologies. Using those existing technologies in new ways will, as history has shown time and time again, lead to new technologies with far reaching results for mankind.

Pardon me if you’ve already mentioned this link (couldn’t find any mention while quickly browsing your Mars/Phoenix posts), but the Mars Phoenix Lander has its own Twitter feed, in the first person!

(H/T evilmadscientist.com)