Exactly
You can't even sell scientific exploration to the planetary science community (shame on them!). Geologic exploration should be ample justification for exploring Mars. Do you think that's adequate? No way Jose. The only politically valid justification for exploring Mars is to look for Mars bugs. Without the falsehood of a "bug hunt" there would be no Mars program.
But at least the MER missions WERE honestly designed, unlike Beagle2. Pillinger and co bought the 'bug hunt' meme hook, line and sinker .. and even if Beagle 2 had landed successfully, its science would have probably been disappointing to the bug-hunters .. it would have been good atmospheric chemistry etc., not much more. (OK, that's me admitting that there's probably bugger-all life on Mars ..)
But the MER people did NOT buckle under to that meme, and still designed and executed beautiful geological missions, which will stay with us for our lifetimes. They also deserve credit for not trying to explicitly and dishonestly sell these missions as bug hunts - it was always made clear that the purpose was geological. The main concession was to design and sell the missions around geology which might have supported life in the past .. fair enough, that's still heaps more integrity than Pillinger and co. All power to JPL ..
o get permanently into space, one of two conditions need to be satisfied:
1) Cheap access to Low Earth Orbit that reduces costs to the point of enabling private enterprise to drive space exploration and development (this would be between $100/kg - $1000/kg).
2) Some super compelling reason to go into space that justified the expense, e.g. survival of the species.
I'm rooting for condition 1: say the space elevator, or a breakthrough in cheap heavy-lift capability .. condition 2 is just not psychologically honest, as I've been arguing here and on the Space board. We go to explore and extend our horizons .. ad astra per aspera
Daniel