Quote Originally Posted by frugal-one View Post
This was not the time to do this. We have so many out of work and food insecurities. Why do we even need to know if there was life there? Who cares?
This is the kind of argument often made against pure science. It's not just whether or not there was ever life on Mars, or how subatomic particles behave, or the mating habits of some obscure insect. It's the discoveries that result from these kinds of explorations that advance human knowledge and very often benefit humankind in ways that aren't immediately apparent.

Who cares about the shapes of birds' beaks in the Galapagos Islands? Charles Darwin did, and laid the foundations of modern biology. But just think of how many poor people in England the cost of that voyage could have fed!