Anyone want to work for NASA?

[Umbran]

... but you nor Reynard have said anything to convince me Mars has more merit over alternative manned programs in the near to medium term.

I don't recall you asking us to do so, nor even defining what you feel "near", "medium" or "long" is, so this feels like a weird thing to assert.

"You didn't accomplish this thing that nobody said you should be trying to do!"

 

[Reynard]

This is irrelevant, no likely manned expedition to mars will have the local resources to spare to make the difference between the human mind locally or the human mind on Mars matter but the manned mission could fund a hell of a lot of rovers.

That's not how field work, sell, works. You could gain more from humans on the surface for a week than a year of rovers.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

That's not how field work, sell, works. You could gain more from humans on the surface for a week than a year of rovers.

This is really down to relative cost/ relative return. How many rovers can one get to Mars for the price of a single manned mission.

 

[Rabulias]

I fall somewhere in the middle. I think we should send out a lot more rovers now to find out all they can about Mars. Yes, it will be limited information compared to what an equipped human scientist could do there, but it will be better to acquire this "low hanging fruit" data with robots:
1) It will be a cheaper method to gather this "easy" data.
2) It may provide additional information about travel to/survival on Mars that will help future human visitors.
3) It will free up those human visitors to do more involved/difficult/detailed research, the kind that only on-site humans can do.

 

[Kaodi]

I think there is a sense in which the actual cost of space exploration is the resources consumed in pursuing it. A useful question might be right now is, "What more or less useless things do we do right now that are equivalent to the opportunity cost of a Mars mission, which actually accomplishes something?" If you can create an explanation for why we are likely to keep doing the costly, useless thing then the question about the costly, useful thing, becomes, "Well, why not that too?"