If I just wanted to be entertained, I'll turn on the TV or go see a film.

I am talking about the excitement and adventure of exploring a truly alien world.
And I mean REALLY alien. Mars looks like a desert on Earth with a pinkish sky.
At least our Moon had the decency to be somewhat strange from the ground.

Don't worry, no one with any purse strings for the space program will listen to me.
But I can tell you that places like the Phoenix landing site will never generate the
same interest as seeing an Io volcano up close or swimming in the ocean of
Europa - and maybe having something swim past the submarine probe's cameras.

Or how about the 20-mile high ice cliffs of Miranda? And don't tell me there is
much that can beat seeing Saturn from saying right outside the rings?

Or maybe INSIDE the rings. I have long had this idea of something like a
soccer ball gently bouncing its way around the rings, taking images and
briefly "landing" on pieces of ring to sample them before bouncing off onto
another ring.

You want to get the public excited, the same public that has been fed
Star Trek and Star Wars for the last 4 decades? Then let's start sending
our spacecraft to some really exotic worlds. Why bother landing on a
planet that looks like Earth? You will only get them to say Why go all
the way to another planet if it's just like ours?