I still don't think we should send anything to Mars, manned or otherwise. Unless the CIA can manufacture plausible evidence to suggest that Martians are hiding Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction, or that Osama Bin Laden may be hiding behind one of those big red rocks, our tax dollars have more immediate problems to address. Sure the pictures are neat, and the technological side-effects of getting there will create products that benefit everyone like Tang and Velcro.

Really though, the neat little side effects don't justify the cost and neither does the ultimate goal of the program. What could they possibly discover there? Even if they found pure gold, it wouldn't be economical to bring it back.

I suggest that we should replace the "Mission to Mars" with the "Mission to Eradicate Malaria". Redirect all that Mars funding into un-manned remote vaccination vehicles or something like that. We'll get press conferences featuring wonderful pictures of kids that aren't sick, instead of more lame pictures of a Martian landscape where the most interesting feature is the probe itself.

I have to admit that my only real reason for bashing Mars exploration is Steve Squyres. Paranoid conspiracy theories aside, I just get a bad feeling about the guy. He reminds me way too much of Kent from the movie Real Genius.

Apologies to Gil Scott Heron for ripping off "Whitey on the Moon"