Just hope I live long enough to see missions to the surface of the possible ocean moons of Europa, Ganymede and Enceladus.
Talk of NASA spending its limited budget on more rover missions to mars or another manned mission to the moon makes me want to slam my head into the wall. Would it be cool to see another American flag planted on the moon? Sure but again with such limited resources why? There are so many more interesting places to explore in our solar system.
With our current rocket technology a manned mission to Mars would be around 600 days round trip and cost around a trillion dollars. From what we've learned about the effects of microgravity on the human body Its just not going to happen with our current tech no matter how much they talk about it.
The possibility of finding life on Europa, Ganymede and Enceladus is much more likely then finding any on Mars imo. While I understand the difficulties overcoming the intense radiation such missions would have to deal with it should be possible.
