It's not going to be the least bit inspiring to send people to Mars and plant a flag, or ride around in a rover. Find a reason to go there and stay. If we could at least colonize it that would be some motivation.
If you want to drive the cost to get to Mars down, game it in some way. The X-Prizes seem to be an effective way to get lots of people working on various problems.
Nope. In fact, it would probably be demoralizing because the public's appetite for spending money on the space program would probably be exhausted.
We've already ventured off the planent. Now we need to figure out a way to permanently leave the planet. What's the most effective way? Expensive manned missions to Mars is not the place to start.
If you want to drive the cost to get to Mars down, game it in some way. The X-Prizes seem to be an effective way to get lots of people working on various problems.
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/
This technique has worked for centuries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_prize
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize