> For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. I completely agree that we should better fund space exploration, but I

> For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. I completely agree that we should better fund space exploration, but I disagree that humans on Mars are the best way to do that. It would be great to have humans on Mars for many other reasons, but realistically, the human body is pretty poor pound-for-pound and watt-for-watt as a rover, actuator, drill, sensor, or computing substrate. Opportunity didn't cover much ground not because they tried to make a 2800 mile robot but couldn't build one that could do more than 28, but because we have been extremely patient and thorough in exhaustively studying those 28 miles. It's a depth-first, not breadth-first search.