Yep. There's a great video of Dr. Robert Zubrin (author of "The Case For Mars") answering the why question of going to Mars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2M

Yep. There's a great video of Dr. Robert Zubrin (author of "The Case For Mars") answering the why question of going to Mars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I One of his points is the effect that space exploration has on kids. It excites them. It makes them want to be explorers too. Kids are full of imagination, they hear about people on another world and they imagine themselves doing it too. It happened with the moon landings, and it inspired kids to become scientists and technologists and to follow their own paths to exploration. edit: despite being born too late to be mesmerized by the moon landings in real-time, I was one of those kids. I started playing with computers and writing my first programs when I was 8. I watched a lot of Star Trek and James Doohan's Scotty was my favorite character. There was a picture of Neil Armstrong on my wall. I got "Odyssey" magazines and had a book that artistically imagined what life might be like elsewhere in the solar system that I read until, literally, the cover fell off. I had an audio cassette that took you on a wild ride through the solar system. The hope of exploring space someday is what drew me into technology. So many years later, and I only use that technology to have arguments with other people over whether exploration is "worth it" at all. How's that for some weltschmerz?