Can you please elaborate? Are you saying that NASA is currently training astronauts to go to Mars? Anyway, I second Phoenix's sentiment. I can't stand when people talk about space exploration as though it's "pointless" and such.
if you're still applying patch, stop. The server is dropping clients when it goes over bandwidth, and then that applying patch screen pops up. At least, i think that's happening. Just do a direct download. Or i could be totally wrong