While I in turn am sympathetic with the feeling of many that NASA has some additional scentific goals as important (or more so) as the search for alien life -- with both Earth studies and studies of the Sun's behavior being at the top -- I'd like to know the basis of your certainty that there is very little chance of finding either microbial life or prebiotic chemicals (which, as I said in the article, are just as important) on Mars or Europa (or, in the case of prebiotics, some other outer worlds). Most planetary scientists today are quite willing to admit there's a very good chance that ancient Mars or ancient Europa evolved primitive life or at least headed well in that direction before becoming more hostile -- and it is now considered a near-certainty that there is still liquid water underneath the savagely inhospitable surfaces of today's Mars and Europa (in the rock pores about 1 km down in the case of Mars, at a depth where large numbers of microbes still survive on Earth). Astrobiology, as the single most important purpose (though certainly not the only one) for exploration of other worlds, is very far from being an overly expensive wild goose chase.