...but hopefully not a dollar short.

I have some ruminations on yesterday's (actually, still today's in Mountain, Pacific and Central time) anniversaries.

"a robot on Mars, clawing into its dirt, seeking signs of life, whether present or past (an issue that it failed to resolve),"

Viking resolved that question with the Wolf Trap experiment. NASA just didn't like the answer (yes).

I have to say, Rand, that you have outdone yourself in the last paragraph. That's the one in which you suggest not only private sector voyages to Mars in the year 2026, but private sector Mars settlements. The mind boggles. And people wonder why there is a giggle factor.

Yes, that is mind boggling. Why would private companies want to do something so expensive and pointless? For that matter, why should taxpayers want the government to do it?

Paul, polling data does seem to indicate that there is wide spread public support for humans to Mars expeditions.

Paul, polling data does seem to indicate that there is wide spread public support for humans to Mars expeditions.

Do they? Polls I've seen put support for manned space efforts below almost everything else the federal government does, including welfare and crop subsidies.

The form of the poll matters. If you ask the polled group 'should NASA send astronauts to Mars?', you'll get one set of answers, but if you ask for relative priorities, or if you ask if taxes should be raised to fund the effort, you'll get a very different set of answers. This suggests to me that the numbers the space fans cling to are more an artifact of polling than a true representation of the desires of the taxpayers.

All of that aside, it doesn't answer the question I posed: *why* should taxpayers want it?

Polls that ask priorities are really the ones that are misleading. A certain number of respondants believe, because of the question, that if one does space exploration, one can't do healthcareeducationtheenvironment.