It'll pretty much smell exactly like soil does now.

Wasn't getting rid of all those burdensome Obama era net neutrality regulations going to create massive new investments from our telecom companies? And the Tax changes are going to create all sorts of jobs! If we survive the next 3 years w/out falling so far behind the rest of the developed world it'll be a miracle.

Millions!

No one knew how hard getting to Mars ones! No one!

How long until the average person realizes that it's robots taking the jobs not the Mexicans/immigrants. And then the problem becomes what can we build a wall around to stop them?

If telecom companies were asked to do things voluntarily we'd all still be getting really fine service from our nationwide monopoly.

You have the right to your own opinion, you don't have the right to your own facts.

Really? We are there.

We, as in the US, tend to think that we need to use a 400 billion dollar plane to drop a 40 thousand dollar bomb on a 15 dollar tent.

...Physics...you crazy!

...when we find something, will we be able to recognize it as life? In all likelihood, anything we find will be so drastically different from what we're used to defining as "life", we may not even be able to recognize its state of being "alive".

Hasn't anyone watched a sci-fi movie in the past 20 years?

Ever notice how someone with an agenda you agree with is brilliant and insightful, but someone with one you disagree with, my god, they're brain washing everyone! Oh noes!

You're more or less arguing my point. Just like I said, there was very little debate, even fewer laws (mainly the patriot act, which was passed with huge support). The federal government's power grab was basically carte blanche - do what is needed to make us safe, and by reelecting Bush (although to my own recollection Kerry didn't really offer much opposition to it or really bring it up for debate) the public threw more support behind it, and yes, a lot of the reason for that was because no one really knew what was going on. In short, its a mess, but its a mess we, the people, let happen, and now its very firmly entrenched and its going to take a lot for it to be removed.

If it's not the will of the people, then why do so many people still cling to the idea of "I don't have anything to hide, so I don't care of the government watches!"? That attitude and the creation of the monitoring that we now enjoy are practically chicken-and-egg.