Kim Stanley Robinson (l'auteur de la Trilogie Martienne et des Menhirs de Glace a mis en ligne un article Why We Should Go To Mars . Tout un programme.

Petit extrait

"One of the best arguments for making the trip is pragmatic. We are now embarked as a civilization on a program of sustained global environmental management; we have changed the climate already, and from now on we have to deal with the Earth as a total dynamic system, trying to keep it all in balance. The better we understand our planet, the better we will be able to keep it (and ourselves) healthy. One of the most powerful scientific methods for understanding something is to compare it with other things like it, and there aren't many options when you look around for other planets to compare with Earth. For the foreseeable future, Mars is not only the best choice, it is probably the only one. We've come to understand that the two planets shared very similar beginnings, then radically diverged; understanding more about the two planetary histories will teach us a lot about Earth. So we should go to Mars to help us here. It's as simple as that. Comparative planetology is an environmentalist tool, and going to the Red Planet is a green project."