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Originally Posted by Mistermystery
By now you'd think that the whole planet is immerged in the stuff.
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Heh, well, considering the evidence, it just might still be immersed, just not in the Terran sense.
A good chunk of our interest in Mars is the hunt for life, past, present and future. Water is a key to this. We're seeing evidence of major water presence in the past and we're looking at pictures which could well signal its presence in some minute form even today. Which means that even if there's no life there now, there could be someday.
You come down on the hunt for water, but I remind you that the hunt is not only driving Martian exploration, its also driving Lunar exploration (Clementine, among others) and the proposed JIMO mission back to the Galilean satellites.
The hunt for water in the solar system is as crucial as any other mission we launch, because while other missions tell us about the places we'll likely never be able to go, missions looking for water give us a pretty good idea of where we WILL be able to go.