Mars is Hard

Here's a graphical representation of all missions to Mars, indicating whether they were successful or not, and if so, what type of space craft. As you can see, most missions have been failures, though the success rate has been pretty good of late. Getting better! But! These are just robots, and who cares what happens to a robot? Sending humans will be far more difficult for the foreseeable future, and ultimately, what's the point?

Mars is not enough, and it poses so many difficulties. There's no special mineral wealth, little water, lots of radiation, and the low gravity means any long term habitation will be permanent - you could never come back to Earth. Couple all that with the difficulty of getting there, and it's not worth it, at least not for a long time.

I've given up on Mars, and the Moon (leave them for the robots), as they are nothing more than stunts, and our true future lies in space itself, and with the little asteroids floating all around about it.