[allenp]

I think the best reason for wanting to do this is that the rover's top speed is around 2in / second, it requires significant man power on the earth to drive/control, and they have a limited toolset with few ways to augment what it starts with. Over the course of 6 years the two rovers had only covered 13 miles collectively.

All of these things can be overcome with time, money, science, engineering, etc.

In the short term, for a relatively large amount of money -OR- the acceptance of deaths, we can put a human on that same surface who can cover miles per day, autonomously explore and discover, use new tools as soon as they arrive, can deal with unexpected circumstances, and make suggestions about what would be useful to have to do more science/work.

All that said - it is hard issue and I think it more likely a commercial effort will send a human before the government.