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Martian to other Martion (watching astronaut exiting a lander): "There goes the neighborhood!" I'm visualizing a old cartoon where an American Indian says that to another, as they watch Pilgrims disembarking from the Mayflower.

So why is George Bush talking about sending humans to Mars and the moon? Election-year politics? Probably. Trying to do everything his father tried to do? Maybe. I haven't heard anyone mention lately that China is planning to send manned missions to Mars and the Moon. Their success at putting a man in orbit was page-four news in the USA, but front-page news elsewhere. The revival of the Space Race is a way for the USA to say that we are still a power in technology and science, not to be eclipsed by China, even though China manufacturers almost everything that Walmart and other retails are selling in the USA today.

Mars-nay-sayers say they we should be solving problems at home, before "sending" people elsewhere. Is that what the proto-American-Indians said before they crossed the Bering Strait into the Americas? Or the Vikings before they sailed west? Or the Spaniards and English and other Europeans? (Or the slaves?) People, as long as they remain human, will always have problems. No sense in delaying space exploration (and colonization) forever until we "solve" humanity.

I want humans on the moon and Mars, and elsewhere, so we have a "backup" for our species if life on Earth gets destroyed by extinction-event-sized asteroid. I'm confident that even if we do send people into space, we'll still be working on the problems at home as well. Of course, we need to clean up our environment - it's becoming unsafe to eat fish more than once a week from mercury and other pollutants in and around our coastlines. Let's hope that if/when we terra-form and colonize Mars, that we treat its environment better than we've treated our own so far. But we gotta make those first steps.