There's been a lot of on and off chatter over the years about the possibility of some form of micro life buried on Mars.
And now with the news of the Mars probe exploration in progress there's more talk about committing to a manned exploration of the planet. Theyre even taking names of volunteers.
There's also virtually never any talk about the huge risks involved that are essentially unavoidable, in particular, the psychological stresses that any team would endure no matter how ready we think we are:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/head ... psychology
After reading that piece it really got me thinking:
With all due reapect for the admirable pioneering spirit of Mankind, is it really worth it?
From everything we know so far, Mars is just a dead rock. We even are discovering things about it that form the moment are the opposite of what we once thought:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3956626
Methane was thought to perhaps harbor some form of primitive life and now theres zero signs of it
risking human life just to say "we did it" for no reason orher than bragging rights seems foolish at this point.
I say we upgrade our Rovers more before we gamble on a trip to Mars where god knows how deep we need to dig in red dirt to find something that looks like it might be life.
A trip to Europa (which aint going to happen in our life time) might be a far better gamble.
But if we are getting methane claims about Mars wrong, what might we be wrong about a rock that millions of miles farther?
Ugh!