Are there good records of opinions on 1400s Europeans thoughts on sea exploration or colonial Americans thoughts on exploring the West? Curious to see if these sorts of risk averse, "practical" arguments are mirrored in those times.
So Europeans weren't going on what if journey, but they were trying to find a way to India, bypassing Ottomans. Spanish found America and it's resources (sugar cane, tobacco, potato, corn) and Portuguese found a way around Africa to India to get back to the spice trade.
The thing is that European motivation was clearly defined, while motivation to go to Mars is not clear at all, because there is nothing valuable there at this point.
But imagine finding on the Mars an alien shipwreck from 200 milion years ago, there would be several outposts build within this decade, because technology is the spice trade of today.
And there is even some alien technology salvage when Alien warships happen to have a human induced accident (read 240 converted naval anti-ship cruise missiles slam into them).
Minor things really...