I agree with everyting you wrote. And I keep thinking the U.S. should first rebuild itself before going to Mars. It depends on what kind of time horizon we're

I agree with everyting you wrote. And I keep thinking the U.S. should first rebuild itself before going to Mars. It depends on what kind of time horizon we're talking here. Each shuttle launch cost over 1 billion USD. Hence, killing the shuttle program would release enormous amounts of capital to be used to "conquer" Mars. Say, 10 billion a year. That's enough money to fund the space exploration effort if the time horizon is a few decades, instead of 1 decade (as it happened in the 1960s). Carl Sagan was against the shuttle program because he said that one can't keep going to the very same place and call it "exploration". In a way, he had a good point. So, it perhaps would make sense for the U.S. to allow the Europeans and Russians to manage the ISS, and while the Chinese spend trillions becoming the world's super power, the U.S. could spend trillions becoming the Solar System's one and only colonizer. It would take decades for the other nations to catch up. Last but not least, I am a bit concerned about the impact on Mars. It's a very long shot, but suppose there's life on Mars. Colonizing Mars would contaminate, if not destroy, the original habitat and prevent us from learning more about it, which would be unfortunate.