Will he be right? There is ice just underneath the surface of Mars. But for all we know the ice is 3 miles thick, you need quite the machine to drill through that.
And would life be as omnipresent as they think it is? Isn't life just an anomaly? Our 'building blocks' don't live when you examine them individually. Only in a certain combination they 'live', maybe we are a strange mutation from the universal norm. Still, only one way to find out, and that is to go there.
But then again, I find our efforts to explore our solar system still pretty underwhelming. I'd have expected them to send more Marslanders, they always told me it is bad to bet on just one horse.
