The question of life on Mars may remain unanswered, but according to NASA, rovers Spirit and Opportunity have dug up reason for us to believe it to be highly possible:
Water once "drenched the surface" of Mars, NASA scientists announced Tuesday...."NASA launched the Mars Exploration Rover mission specifically to check whether at least one part of Mars had a persistently wet environment that could possibly have been hospitable to life," James Garvin, a lead NASA scientist, said in a statement. "Today we have strong evidence for an exciting answer: Yes."
The astounding success of this mission will be awfully difficult to criticize by those who believe that NASA is the embodiment of throwing good money after bad. And if the public can generally agree that space exploration is a worthy investment, what's to stop a serious discussion on giving the private sector a chance to fully participate, so no one need complain about the difficulty and cost of launching robots and rockets except willing investors?