In the 1400s people thought it was foolhardy to send people into boats out on the ocean out of sight of land because they thought they would fall off the edge or be eaten by monsters.  Dissing manned space travel to Mars because of something as insignificant as money, or that it seems hard is just a pathetic rewind back to the timidity of that era.  Those who prefer America remain a leading power among nations should all be clamoring for the development and mastery of manned space travel, because history shows that without mastery of space travel we will be consigned to second tier status in the century to come.

You should see the images on planet Earth,
I peeked,  no wonder they want to go Mars!!!!

Absolutely amazing but I think our president needs to push for
a manned expedition to land men on the sun, now that would be
quite a fitting claim for such an astute leader that wants to curt
tail a workable space program then turning 180 degrees and
talk of sending people to mars.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/02/why-
obama-is-smart-to-cut-the-nasa-moon-plan/35109/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7590756/Barack-
Obama-to-unveil-bold-space-mission-to-send-astronauts-
to-Mars.html

So what is it to be? I’m of the opinion that even a trip to mars
would be fraught with danger to have humans, no matter how
pumped up on a trip to mars, travel probably for the greater part
of a year through space; that would have to create some kind of
personality conflicts that could easily endanger such a mission
or will or is there a hibernation system set up to let HAL 9000
monitor?

Really do need to maintain and use unmanned probes for the
foreseeable future because I doubt the ability in the short term
to have the fictional capacity of a 2001 or 2010 mission to
jupiter much less to mars work.