Why am I pooh-poohing 'Men on Mars'?

Men on Mars falls into the same category as Sex, as defined by the Earl of Chesterfield, who said: "Sex: The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable."

As I've mentioned before on here in previous rants, Mars, much earlier in the life of the solar system, was hit by a large meteoroid of between 100 and 200 Kilometers in diameter which struck it near its equator and punctured its crust.

Knowing what we do now about the explosive effects of even a much smaller such object flying in from outer space and striking a planet, not to mention one of the size estimated to have hit Mars, puncturing its crust, and therefore penetrating into its molten magma interior, there must have been one Hellish and unbelievably large explosion. It destroyed the planet. 

What we see there now is mostly what is left after the planet momentarily got blown up (i.e. expanded like a balloon) ejecting most of its surface features, oceans, and atmosphere into space. The molten magma core itself being both heavier than outer surface materials, and being 'plastic' or molten, would reform into its original spherical shape, and collect to itself the larger pieces of that surface fragmentation. So Mars still retains some of its original features, possibly including "Mount Sharp" in the center of that huge crater, it having landed there while the original core was still molten and not yet cooled enough to form a new hard surface. There's a difference in elevation between one of Mars' hemispheres and the other of between one and three kilometers as a result of that impact by the foreign body. That suggests to me that Mars was literally blown apart, and the pieces rejoined unevenly.

That 5,000 kilometer long "canyon" of various widths, and depths estimated at several kilometers, could possibly be the reclosed exit hole where a portion of the original molten core was ejected during that impact. If its sides formed a circle, that circular 'hole' would be about the size required to allow our Moon to pass through. And here's an interesting fact: our Moon and Mars have almost identical calculated mean densities, with the Moon being 3.346 grams per cubic centimeter, and Mars being 3.93 grams per cubic centimeter. These are lower than any of the other terrestrial planets.  Mercury is 5.43, Venus is 5.20, and our Earth is 5.52 grams per cubic centimeter.

Did that Pluto-sized object which struck Mars in the distant past pass completely through it, collecting some of Mars' core material en route, and later become trapped by Earth's gravitational pull, to become our Moon?

There's evidence portions of Mars plate structure has been magnetized, but the planet as a whole today is not. However, it's known that if a magnetized body is struck a sufficiently strong blow, it loses its magnetism. Mars was definitely struck a "sufficiently hard blow" and that is what probably scrambled its magnetic fields. The Asteroid Belt of sand, gravel, and mostly broken rocks estimated to contain about 20% of a planet's mass, and these periodic Comets perhaps are the other remains of Mars' surface features and oceans. And it is in a higher orbit now than it once was, because that stuff flying into the system added mass and energy to it - just as with atoms. Think about it. There's usually a reason for everything, if we can find it. And maybe I'm "full of it" - but maybe I'm not. Some Comets recently have exhibited evidence of sodium in their tail gases, and that may be because they were once salt water, such as found in an ocean. Maybe on Mars. We know Mars once had oceans. We just haven't yet found them. Or have we? - Too bad we can't put them back.