"Mars, as close as it is, is a planet too far. It would take well over a year to get there, work there and come back. It may prove impossible to get the astronauts back — a one-way trip is being considered, which raises troubling ethical questions. The astronauts would absorb dangerous doses of cosmic radiation. The mental anguish they are likely to suffer from living for so long in isolation, much of the time in zero to little gravity, is a recipe for profound psychological damage.
It’s also ridiculously expensive. Cost estimates are in the tens of billions of dollars. Based on previous experience with big government projects, we can expect the final cost to double or triple. By attempting to send humans to Mars we would divert a great deal of public money from potentially improving life on Earth for millions of people to just putting a few humans on another planet."
