Why we're not going to Mars

I can't help but think that the author, had he lived in 1600, would have argued a similar point about why we're not going to the Americas.

After all, there are no roads or churches, the place is full of strange animals, plants and potentially hostile natives, and there's no guarantee that proper European crops will even grow there! And how much will it cost and how long will it take for such a colony to become self-sufficient, if ever?

Defeatism. Bah.

There are a lot of good points in this article but this comment overlooks one thing:

"I’ll admit there still may be an outside chance that some consortium will fund and execute a mission to send a few poor, intrepid souls on a one-way trip to live short lives on Mars in a gruesome experiment, televised for all to watch."

There are people willing to make the one-way trip, and the ethics of this have been discussed at length [1]

But it seems to me that the one thing we would have to probably "let go" of is worrying about "contaminating" Mars.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/0...