alt Hacker NewsI think the opposite - unless the discovery of life was preceeded or coincidental with the discovery of some other hyper interesting thing (for example, if Martian life has some sort of utility for medicine, maybe) then I think that would be that for Mars exploration missions. Of course there would be many announcements and excited political agreements around "continuing to explore the new frontier" but I think that no more money would appear.
I suspect that NASA knows this full well, as do Mars scientists, and I suspect that they are being very careful to make sure that definitive proof does not appear until they understand all sorts of other stuff about the planet.
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You have to admire the discipline, willpower, and solidarity of all those scientists. Any one of them could prove the existence of life on Mars at any time, win a Nobel Prize, become the the most famous scientist since Einstein, put themselves on the gravy train for life... but they all hold out, keeping their decent, upper-middle class jobs, hiding one of the greatest discoveries in history, so that their colleagues don't have to find potentially slightly less lucrative or interesting jobs. That's dedication!
/S
But why? Why would there be no money for that but there’s money now when there’s no conclusive evidence of life, past or present, on Mars? It makes no sense.