Send people when there's a coherent plan for them to do something useful. Not before. (1) Oliver Morton: "The fact that there are plenty of people who might v

Send people when there's a coherent plan for them to do something useful. Not before. (1) Oliver Morton: "The fact that there are plenty of people who might volunteer ... does not mean that it would be right to indulge them. If they live, they do so because of unparalleled spending. A world where a select few gets hundreds of millions, at the very least, invested annually merely to keep them alive while equally deserving people die in large numbers for want of far less is not a very attractive place. Human Mars exploration is indeed a fine goal, and it is quite possible that fairly early on there will be some who elect to stay. But the only real argument for doing it sooner rather than later is the selfish one of wanting to see/participate in it personally. There is something poetic about the notion of death on Mars, or of choosing to die there - Clarke's Transit of Earth caught that nicely. But Liebestod is not a good basis for public policy." http://mainlymartian.blogs.com/semijournal/2009/09/oneway-to-mars-no-way-to-mars.html http://mainlymartian.blogs.com/semijournal/2009/09/oneway-to... (2) Funding large risky space missions through advertising is not credible. Cash needs peak ~3 years before Mars arrival. The team building the British Mars lander tried hard to raise money from advertising - with help from M&C Saatchi - but "failed to raise any external funding guarantees." Hunting for sponsors "seriously hindered the orderly build-up of the project engineering team," contributing to the 2003 loss of the spacecraft over Isidis Planitia. Crash investigation: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/ukspaceagency/docs/space-science/beagle-2-commission-of-inquiry-report.pdf http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/ukspaceagency/docs/space-scienc...