what is more important; finding water on mars or providing potable water to those that don't have it on earth?

Answer 1

They aren't mutually exclusive objectives. Both are important, both should be done. The reason people don't have potable water to drink has nothing to do with space exploration.

Answer 2

Can you imagine selling bottled water from Mars? People would probably be breaking their necks to try it once. Sry, very off-topic. Who's responsibility is it to "provide" drinking water world-wide? A pure humanitarian would say it's more important to provide potable water to all humans, but a realist would say that those who are without water are that way for a reason, and the responsibility of finding their own water source is theirs alone. I don't think either initiative is terribly important at this time.

Answer 3

The problem is not that people don't have water on Earth, if you referring to third world countries, the problem is that the money doesn't exist in those places to provide a clean source of water.
Finding water on Mars is now proven, so I think it is more important that NASA gets off their butts and starts planning a mission there, because we are using all of our resources at a quick pace, and accomodating land is dimishing that Mars will provide an adequate new home for a lot of people, much like the Moon will.

Answer 4

It is more important to find water on Mars than to find it on Earth since we already know there is water on Earth, and now we know liquid water used to be on Mars - vast seas of the stuff.

It is also important to provide potable water to the people of Earth who don't have it but it is up to each individual government to take care of their own people first.

So which is more important, to find water on Mars or to have humane and democratic governments on Earth who will provide for their people and not slaughter nor enslave them?

Answer 5

It isn't necessarily an absolute choice between the two. Discovering water on Mars (or the Moon) might eventually help solve the problem of providing drinkable water for people on Earth. That's probably a long ways off, though, so we do need to look for ways to solve it here on Earth, too.

Answer 6

Yes, this is a false dichotomy.

Further, is there a moral imperative to provide potable water for an arbitrarily large and uncontrolled population?

Answer 7

Earth. Like it or not scientists, but we're going to be here for a while.