Daaaah Whoosh said:
It's pretty cool that there's all this planning to put colonists on Mars, but I don't see what it's going to do for us. Maybe in a few hundred years we'll have a plan B if Earth blows up, but other than that, this sounds like sending people to a new place just because we can.
Basically, yes.
We didn't go to the moon to mine its resources, and we didn't climb Everest to set up a research outpost. Sometimes, we just need to do things in order to advance as a species, even if they aren't particularly useful.
Space travel needs a good kick in the pants right now, and this is the sort of thing that will get people interested and hopefully renew people's love of space.