Water on Mars? Let's go see what's there!

Water on Mars could become a bigger discovery than finding life on other planets.

Why? It gives us encouragement to reach for the stars again.

Let's face it. For many people the International Space Station has meant our space program is in a holding pattern as we wait...for what?

Mars gives us a vision, something to shoot for.

President Kennedy inspired an entire generation with his challenge to go to the moon in a decade. This generation needs some inspiration, too.

Oh sure, some will say we have so much poverty at home, why should we go to Mars?

The answer is knowledge, learning whatever there is to learn on a voyage of that magnitude.

Europeans didn't have to come to this continent. Asians had already discovered this land, before the first Europeans set foot here. But wouldn't we be much poorer if those Europeans hadn't come and established what became the United States? Granted, the "Indians" might have been better off, but we don't know that. They could have been easily been persecuted by later settlers. It's certain that someone from Europe would have found their way to this land sooner or later.

I don't know what will come of exploration of Mars. That's just it, none of us know. But can we afford to not find out? Why wait for future generations to decide to go, for they most certainly will?

Mars has been a fascinating topic for generations.

Broadcasting history was made one Halloween when Orson Welles broadcast H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" as if it were a series of news bulletins. Years later, a South American radio station produced the same show in the local language and residents became so enraged at the prank, they burned the station to the ground!

We need a vision for the future.

It was not by coincidence that one of the TV networks broadcast the 1964 movie, "First Men in the Moon" right around the time we first set foot on the moon in 1969.

It is more than luck that has kept the "Star Trek" franchise going for more than 40 years.

We look to the heavens and stretch our collective muscles to reach beyond our Earth.

Water on Mars? Yay! Let's go see what it tastes like!