Maybe they could get Ryanair to help fund a spacecraft to take them there, you know, patch up their differences. I can see the advertising now, grown women dressed as schoolgirls eating Mars bars as a rocket ship goes into the sky in the background.....

"He added: "Because Mars is there and Mars is accessible to the technologies available to humanity, we cannot refuse to attempt this adventure.""

So is the same with any rock in the vicinity, then ? Let's got there to brag in front of the cameras, and gain nothing but PR out of the taxpayers money ? Imagine the recorded voice of the astronauts: "Ok, I'm putting my foot for the first time on Phobos. A small step for me, and ... er ... well a medium one for humanity. Geez, what a dump ! Even Belfort is nicer ..."

Can't believe we've elected that twat, really. Hope we won't do the same mistake as the US folks did with Bush, but who knows ...

Anon, as the militia is looking for me ...

Please stop talking about things you nothing about, and spare us all from your tiring French arrogance and smug personality.

Will it become part of the EU? And will Frenchmen living on Mars be able to cast their votes in Eurovision?

We must all work together... we can build everything in France you lot sort out the money.....

considering there just happens to be a series of documentaries about possible missions to Mars on the telly this week. At least I now know which channel His Coleric Shortness (or one of his gophers) watches.

@AC Makes a change from the tiring British arrogance and smug personality of Tony Blair and his ilk, dunnit?

We're going to need a Sarky icon if this continues.

"We must all work together... we can build everything in France you lot sort out the money....."

Good Plan, JonB.

Will we get the olympic games and crossrail to go to phobos too? or maybe just Tessa Jowells ..........

Nice idea, but RyanAir's service to Mars actually terminates at Phobos from where you need to take a connecting bus service for the last 10,000km.

@Coward. To treat others to be arrogant asks for a good level of self-importance ;-)

This, of course, would have nothing to do with the expectation that CNES would get shedloads of money out of such a scheme.

Paris, because even a small share of Daddy's billions is quite a lot.

You can feel the nostalgia for lost leadership, for projects with a simple mission statement, for objectives so clear that everyone from the boss to the office cleaner knows why they get out of bed every day.

Fast forward to now. Deception, fraud, double-dealing, and fear - and the higher you go the worse it gets, and those who are supposed to lead can't, won't and don't. Nostalgia for a time when people in the West admired their leaders.

There is no magnetic field to speak of around Mars. The returning capsule will be bringing back corpses if NASA succumbs to its own junk scientists.

Hang on to your wallets!! When Sarko mentions the U.S. contributing "financial resources" before anything else it sounds like he wants us to fork over cash to the French industrial sector.

Meanwhile, despite Europe's alleged skill in robotics, NASA still has two non-French robotic rovers rolling around the surface of Mars, each having exceeded their planned operational life by something in the neighborhood of 1000%-1500%.

It's scary when NASA (the people who crashed a Mars probe into the planet when they mixed up miles and kilometers in their programming and who came to the brilliant conclusion that a 1/4 inch thich carbon composite leading wing edge would not be at risk from 20-30 pound blocks of ice traveling at upwards of the speed of sound) are more competent than whatever the EU has on offer, but that seems to be the case.

"The returning capsule will be bringing back corpses"

or aliens, or aliens disguised as corpses in some kind of bizarre Quatermass and the Pit dead but not quite dead invasion of Earth...

..and I for one welcome our new undead Martian masters, and look forward to aiding their conquest of the Earth by supplying them with with fresh live nubile females for them to ravish and horribly consume.

Why Mars when the Moon is nearer?

Because the moon is like soooo 1960's!

I like that at the end of this message (and just above the comments) I got the ad, "What's your take on the great Green rush? Join the debate here." So are we to colonise Mars and massacre all the little Green men?

Right, then, first plan should be that upon landing we burn the ships. Oh and bring some blankies of smallpox. Let's see, what's next...

Because it's there.... hmmm.. so is the pub...