Or, just a thought, we just wait 100 years (which is nothing on a cosmological, time-between-asteriods scale) and see what tech we have then.
Did Scott's and Amundsen's trips actually improve any technology that enables us now to have boring research stations at the southpole? It seems that the general scientific and economic progress just happened to also produce the means, as well as the reason to go there again.
Yeah, there's no way that we'd just haphazardly stumble into tech that would get us to Mars. You have to have a concentrated push for it, similar to the push required to get to the Moon.
Did Scott's and Amundsen's trips actually improve any technology that enables us now to have boring research stations at the southpole? It seems that the general scientific and economic progress just happened to also produce the means, as well as the reason to go there again.