Stupid Nasa Moneypit project is all I can say about the notion of going to Mars.
Yeah, just like the moon. We should spend that money taking care of our problems on Earth...
Oh, wait. We did that once and now have more problems than ever. We could have had colonies on the moon and Mars by now. Instead we got back door socialism, obamacare, and SJWs. At least during the Cold War we knew who our enemies were.
What's missing from our culture? A dream. When we had that frontier, that challenge, that great height to hope to reach, vicariously if not standing there, we were a greater, better people. Without it, with the decades of attacks on every principle that makes America great, we're becoming a rudderless mess, led off down the primrose paths to totalitarian (global) socialism. Freedom needs that dream, else why be free?
SO, as the walls of government surveillance, piddling legislation, and the masses clamoring for what you have--not by the sweat of their brow, but because you somehow owe it to them--as those walls close in, the dream of a better place, an 'other side of the hill' lies just over the horizon, just not here on Earth.
It is immeasurably important to keep that dream alive, to establish that foothold before humanity enters its next dark age.