We haven't explored Mars well enough to say if there was any past life, which would be quite interesting to find out. The rover missions are also quite affordable, at about $1 billion a pop. The return on investment is to satisfy our curiosity, which is a perfectly good reason.

It is long term habitation that is a joke. It's cold, near vacuum, hardly any water, and the entire planet is covered in dust and rocks. On top of that, you get bombarded with deadly radiation. Why would anybody want to be there ? We stopped going to the Moon for the same reason. Everybody lost interest, because there's only so much you can do on a dead rock in space.

It is very pragmatic not to sink trillions of dollars into a project without sufficient economic or scientific return. Exploration can be done by unmanned rovers for much less. I'll gladly support an unmanned Moon rover mission. I'd also like to see a sample return mission to Mars.

Sure, if you're making hundreds of trips to Mars, it may be cheaper to build a base on the Moon.

I question that we'll be making hundreds of trips to Mars. If humans ever make it to Mars, it will be a flag planting publicity stunt. There's just not much appeal to a cold and empty desert.

On the contrary. Being pragmatic and calculating is much better for our species than wasting our resources on pie in the sky projects that aren't going to pay themselves back.

You must be joking. In what sense is building a Moon base not insanely complicated ? If you go straight to Mars, you don't need to build the Moon base.

And your calculations about the gravity well make no sense. You should compare delta-v for Moon->Mars and Earth->Mars and then apply the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, to find out how much fuel you'd need.

Why not spend it on useful projects here on Earth, like a working fusion plant, where we can also inspire man to higher goals ?

I think that after you add the cost for a moon base, it will be cheaper and quicker to launch from Earth instead.

Of course, if you put 10 tons of iridium on the market (2.5 times yearly global consumption), prices will plummet, and so will your profits. If you feed the market slowly, with 1 ton/year, and you manage to keep the prices the same, you only make $23 million/year.

Not really. Microsoft's biggest fault is that they don't recognize that the phone, tablet and PC have different purposes, and different modes of usage. In some cases, there's some applications, such as e-mailing or browsing that are done on all devices, but even then there's no need to have exactly the same app. The apps just need to be compatible, and be capable of sharing the files, but apart from that, they should be optimized for the platform and typical use.

In what way is the upgrade from robot travel to Mars to human travel relatively minor ? There's only existing and proven technology for relatively light weight landers with a mass of a few hundred kilograms. The latest Mars Science Lab is a bit heavier at 900 kilograms, but still needs to be proven. There's no technology for anything close to the mass of a human lander.

What else was there to do ? All you can do is walk around in a space suit, do a bit of science, and come back. The science can be done much better by unmanned rovers, and we're still doing that.

In the link you've provided it says they (maybe not Musk) plan to use the Dragon capsule. However, upon reading some I see they're only planning to use it for unmanned landings, which is of course a whole lot easier.

The Dragon capsule is a tiny little thing. How is anybody supposed to land on Mars with that, and carry enough oxygen, water and food to survive for long enough to do anything useful? In addition, you'd need energy generators, communication equipment, scientific instruments, and some sort of Mars buggy. This will never fit, so it would have to be a much bigger capsule. Now, how is he going to land that monster safely ? The heat shield and parachutes are going to be mostly ineffective through the thin Martian atmosphere, so a lot of the braking needs to be done by rockets. This requires a lot of extra fuel (more mass), plus he needs to figure out how to keep the exhaust flame stable while it faces supersonic winds.

Exactly. Right now, the only way to profit from space is to put satellites in orbit. Nearly everything beyond geostationary is a hobby.

More accurately, it's the view the politicians have decided for us. See the secret ACTA negotiations in the EU for instance.