I think the so-called Red Planet (anyone who has bothered to look at the place through a
telescope knows it is more like the pinkish-orange-yellow-white-brownish planet) has proven
to be quite the disappointment.

At one time it promised to be a world covered in giant canals brining water from the poles
to an ancient and dying civilization. But when we finally got there, the place turned out
to be so dead that even microbes were in short supply, to say nothing of intelligent Martians.

Sure, it's got really big volcanoes, but they aren't even active any more, unlike the ones on
Io and probably even Venus, which has thousands. Even Enceladus has got something going
on, and don't forget the active geysers on Triton of all places, with plumes streaking one
hundred miles down range in an atmosphere that's barely enough to even be dignified with
that label.

We sent Phoenix to Mars to see if it has water. Hello - Europa's the size of our Moon and
has an ocean 60 MILES deep covering the entire world! You want water or a few drops in
a bucket?

And Titan - good golly Miss Molly, we might as well remove it from orbit around Saturn and
set it spinning around the Sun, it's essentially a planet in its own right! Ethane lakes, ice
volcanoes, an atmosphere twice as thick as Earth's, maybe a subsurface ocean of who
knows what!

And if you want to go inward, what about Venus? Here's a planet that should have been
similar to Earth but it's not. Instead it has an atmosphere with permanent cloud cover
dozens of miles thick saturated with SULFURIC ACID. Thousands of volcanoes as I said
before, probably many of them active, rivers of lava thousands of miles long, 900 degree F
temps EVERYWHERE, surface air pressure 90 times that of our own, the place's day is longer
than its year - need I go on? Excitement central, gentlemen!

So yes, I think Mars has gotten way too much attention for a place that is essentially a
barren Arizona, but with even less night life. The whole point of exploring deep space is
to find ALIEN worlds, not dried out versions of our own. If we can't get our minds and
our probes off Mars, it may be necessary to pulverize the place with comets until it is
so much dust so that we can finally focus our money on the other truly alien and more
interesting worlds.

Oh yeah, I think the Moon is boring, too, but it's a lot closer and will make an excellent
base to set up our nuclear missiles in case we need to retaliate against China or a
newly revived Russia.