Manned mission to Mars

The cost of a manned mission to Mars is currently estimated at $500,000 million and rising. To this must probably be added the loss of one or more flight crews, a toll that is highly likely in view of the experiences of the Apollo and shuttle programmes. So terribly dear a project requires justification commensurate with its cost, but no such justification has ever been offered, as none exists. There are no scientific grounds for the mission, it being generally agreed that robots can perform scientific tasks in space as well as, or better than, human beings, at far less cost and with no risk to life. In our time, unlike previous centuries, men do not have to be sent to explore the unknown; they can explore through the robots they create and control. A manned mission to Mars is a fifteenth century response to a twenty-first century problem