Mars Or Bust

Here we come!

If all survive - hardly a sure thing, given the planet's reputation as a graveyard for probes - four satellites and three ground-based robots will be sifting the planet for secrets by late January, the greatest concentration of scientific hardware ever assembled on another planet.

[...]

First off the pad will be a quirky, budget-built British robot scheduled for launch tomorrow in Kazakstan. Trailing its fumes will be a pair of NASA rovers departing separately from Cape Canaveral. Instrument-laden European and Japanese orbiters are also aiming to converge on the planet early next year.

2003 NASA budget: $6.1 billion
2003 US Defense Budget (not including Iraq war costs): $379 billion

Just think what we could be doing.