At the risk of sounding crassly utilitarian, I think it’s frankly a dumb idea to send manned space missions to Mars (or even back to the Moon) when there are plenty of problems here on planet Earth whose amelioration could benefit from that sort of concerted national effort and cash (take your pick: extreme poverty, global ecological catastrophe, etc.).

Not to mention, from what I’ve been able to glean, non-manned missions serve useful purposes and are much more cost-effective. Beating the Chinese (or whoever) on a race to Mars just isn’t a very persuasive justification, even if it is the sort of grandiose national project that makes neocons’ hearts go pitter-pat.