"The amount of armchair condescension on HN is appalling." So true. It's surprising that some commenters, above and nearby, don't stop to think that a decades

"The amount of armchair condescension on HN is appalling." So true. It's surprising that some commenters, above and nearby, don't stop to think that a decades-long, multibillion-dollar exploration program, with dedicated conferences (e.g., http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/ http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/), journals (e.g., http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-9100/ http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.10... or http://www.journals.elsevier.com/icarus/ http://www.journals.elsevier.com/icarus/) and scientific communities in the many hundreds of scientists, professors, postdocs, and PhD's, has not gone deeper than sophomoric gotchas like in the comment above. I admit, there is a question here about exploration strategy. The question is how to approach it -- and a little humility and willingness to poke around for information would be in order. Edited to add: The root for documents pertaining to Mars exploration strategy is here (http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports.cfm http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports.cfm) and an excellent reference for contamination control for the upcoming Mars-2020 rover is here (http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports/OCP_2014_final_report_docx.pdf http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports/OCP_2014_final_report_docx.pdf). Finally, don't miss this deep analysis of the "Special Regions" on Mars (http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports/Rummel_et_al_Astrobiology_14-SR-SAG2.pdf http://mepag.nasa.gov/reports/Rummel_et_al_Astrobiology_14-S...). From the abstract: "Significant changes in our knowledge of the capabilities of terrestrial organisms and the existence of possibly habitable martian environments have led to a new appreciation of where Mars Special Regions may be identified and protected. The SR-SAG also considered the impact of Special Regions on potential future human missions to Mars, both as locations of potential resources and as places that should not be inadvertently contaminated by human activity."