The United States hopes to send an astronaut to Mars in a nuclear-powered rocket, according to a senior Nasa official. Under the space agency's ambitious plan, humans would be sent on a two-month journey to Mars in a spaceship travelling at three times the current speed of space travel.
Whole article here

I just don't see what the direct and immediate benefit from going to mars will be? It seems highly unlikely that we will find the cure to aids or cancer there. And as far as the idea of colonizing it, we have to business on another planet, when we haven't proven we know how to care for the one we live on now.