Mars discovery wows, underwhelms: #tellusatoday

NASA announced this week that it had found evidence of recent flowing water on Mars. Comments from Facebook and Twitter are edited for clarity and grammar:

Interesting. Water is a basic building block of life. I wonder if they can get the rover over there to sample the “sludge.”

— Christopher Daly

The range the rover covers is pretty limited. But it’s water in some form. The discovery makes a manned mission more viable and colonization a little easier.

— John Rookwood

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Going to Mars will be a one-way trip. And how long would humans be able to survive in those cold temperatures? Sounds like a suicide mission to me.

— Gary Douglas

Big deal! There’s hot plasma, like fire, on the sun. Knowing this changes nothing. Neither place is habitable.

— @cincybrian

I would love it if 10% of the amount of money spent on defense in the world could be spent on space exploration.

— Jim Harris

How about cleaning up the Earth? How about exploring our oceans instead of outer space? There is no way that someone can live on Mars; they would go crazy!

Without being on Mars, there is no way to say with certainty there is or was water. Scientists have been wrong before, and they could be wrong this time.

— William Ludolph

NASA has been studying Mars for years now, and we still know little. Come on, NASA, tell us something!

— @treker32mlp

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