and is a cheap dodge to kill ideas.
The pursuit of imposed "perfection" drives out the good all to often.
The last thing we need is a friggin' journalist whose main regret is having been too young to whip up hysteria at three mile island, trying to "enlighten" the public about Mars.
The fact is we can gather good data in situ to determine reasonable levels of risk with very high probability.
IF Sir ACC's "trees" turn out to be biological, I think it would be reasonable to hold back and check out mars remotely all together.
Since we can't even get out of LEO, and since NASA is still learning which side, the metric or English, of the rulere to use, I don't think anything is going to go much past the paid brainstorming stage for a long time.
Ed