Actually, if life is found on Mars, the likelihood that astronauts will walk on the planet’s surface in the foreseeable future goes way down. With humans in the surface loop, the back- and forward-contamination issues become very complex.

“If life is found, then the check will be blank, and the drive to get there will be urgently felt by scientists all around the world.”

Agreed, but if I had to bet, I’d bet that those checks will go to expansive robotic exploration, possibly augmented by human operators in orbit around Mars (or on Phobos/Deimos), at least for the foreseeable future.

“Since there seems to be no life on Mars,”

No current life on the surface Mars, but evidence continues to build for habitable environments and bodies of water on the past surface of Mars that may have supported ancient lifeforms now fossilized. For example, just last week, there was an announcement about salt deposits on the Martian surface consistent with ancient lakes/oceans (add http://www.):

sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320150042.htm

Ambitious robotic missions have also been planned to seek evidence of life under the surface of Mars, where conditions should be habitable for extant lifeforms, if they exist (add http://www.):

space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_life_040323.html

“The country needs to focus gov’t money for manned flight on the moon and asteroids.”

I’m all for human exploration of the Moon and asteroids. For now, they’re certainly the closest and most realistic targets for human space exploration, their resources may be leveraging or enabling for more expansive exploration or space development efforts, and some of them certainly pose a quantifiable and avoidable risk to life on Earth.

That said, the most compelling and interesting space exploration targets appear to lie elsewhere. Just last week, in addition to the Mars salt deposit announcement, there were announcements about potential new habitable environments on Titan and the discovery of simple organic molecules in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet (add http://www.):

saturndaily.com/reports/Ocean_May_Exist_Beneath_Titan_Crust_999.html

astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6743

That’s not to say that the Moon and asteroids can’t be exciting (and useful), too. But the really, really exciting developments are happening farther out.

It’s an unfortunate accident of nature that a larger, more complex, more diverse, and living body like Mars isn’t a satellite of the Earth, instead of the smaller, simpler, relatively uniform, and relatively dead Moon.

Of course, we probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the Moon, but it’s nice to dream…

FWIW…

This is exactly why I suggested if we are going to mars, and we are serious about going to mars, and we are serious about staying at mars, then drop off a nano sat GPS system for robot precursor missions operated by astronauts in orbit around mars rather then worrying about having to send the signals back to earth and deal with the lag time. Astronauts orbiting mars on the first orbital mission could operate a small fleet of cheap, single use, ground robots, UAV’s and balloons in real time and gather all the data needed for future landings and spare the expensive earth to mars robotic precursor missions. A lot can happen to a 200kg probe traveling for hundreds of millions to mars, just keep it close and haul it there and astronauts can give it a routine prelaunch check and drop it MORE accurately then trying to fly 400,000,000 miles FIRST, and try to hit an orbit.

No, I’m saying that there are error ellipses that must be taken into account, just like there were in Apollo. We may be lucky enough to hit the bull’s-eye, but statistically, we can’t rely on luck.

So you are on record as claiming that the accurate landings of the last 5 Lunar Modules (5 out of 5) was pure luck? I think the Apollo astronauts would disagree with you. The late Pete Conrad was especially quite proud of his pinpoint landing on Apollo 12. I expect future Mars astronauts, with technology 60 years more advance will do as well.

Also the error ellipses are as large as they are for Mars because the landers are not going into low orbit first and don’t have humans at the controls. Both make a huge difference as the Apollo Astronauts showed.

As for the range of the Mars Pathfinder, it was limited because it was using the lander as a radio relay to Earth. It won’t need the same size relay if it only has to send signals to Mars orbit.

This was after he read about proposals being circulated inside NASA about a manned mars landing in 75 AFTER the 73 flyby. It was then extended to the 82 landing date in the hopes of still saving it. But with budget manuvering they got a clause in about phased development that effectively allowed for the killing of manned mars flights altogether and the voyager mission.

True Nerva was not started as a “MARS ENGINE” but it was clear to kennedy that it was in Dec 12th 1962 when he said “the nuclear rocket would be useful for further trips to the moon or trips to mars.” The PSAC and the white house budget bureau teamed up to stop nuclear engine funding in 1962 because they saw the RIFT test as a foot in the door to an early and COSTLY mars launch. By 1967 those groups capitalized and promoted an anti nuke sentiment among liberal groups.

So in even in 1964 when NASA had stated the 73 fly by and a landing in early 1982 NASA administrators were ALREADY having to factor in funding and how REGARDLESS of how the TECHNOLOGY and ability america had in GOING to mars in the 70’s the only way it could happen is if the number of flights and time in between could be stretched out it still could be doable. Here we see again, it is not about technology or ability, it is political will and money.