system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: there are no good reasons for going to Mars and we should not do it.

I'm a scientist myself and I'm very passionate about space exploration and science in general. I think the time, money and human effort that would be spent on a manned mission to Mars would be largely wasted. 

Some of the arguments I hear in favor of a human mission to Mars are often related to having a "backup planet" or exporting our civilization elsewhere. I will just dismiss these arguments as ludicrous immediately: Mars is a barren rock with no hope of sustaining life. As a species, we currently have no clue how to keep this planet inhabitable, we have no hope of ever populating Mars with any decent numbers. A scientific base? Maybe, sure, an actual colony? That's science fiction.

As far as new scientific knowledge that could be gained from a manned Mars mission, I doubt the enormous resources required for a scientific base on Mars couldn't be spent on having the same or better results with an unmanned probe. Curiosity has been roaming the surface of Mars for 9 years. It needs no food, no water, no human relationships or mental health assistance, and if after all this time it falls in a crater and breaks, no human life has been lost. I find it hard to believe that an automated mission designed to bring back samples from Mars would be harder to realize than a manned mission, and it would be infinitely less dangerous.

I think the idea of a Mars mission is largely a romanticized "to set foot where no creature has ever set foot before" glorification of the human species for some, and a publicity stunt for your garden variety billionaire like Musk. There is little practical reason to do it.

That being said, I love things that are done with no reason other than advance our knowledge and culture, but poetry, art, music, pure mathematics or quantum gravity don't cost billions and don't put any human lives at risk for the romantic ideas of a country or the profits of a billionaire.
gpt
Projects with a lot of prestige, like a manned Mars mission for example, can serve to excite a large amount of people for the cause of scientific exploration and as such create more resources for projects that actually have a big projected return. This sometimes makes flashy, but questionably effective projects like this worth it.