Hi ya Phil, hey I feel what you do to my friend, I get discouraged from time to time when we here about plans for putting humans on Mars and this and that, and that and this....

But..without thinking and studying, nothing will happen at all, that's what I do in the aerospace design field.
You plan, layout designs, do 2 or 3 years of changing and studying, and finally build the sucker. We will get there, slowy, but we are on our way. All these super Mars missions over the next 10 years are for a purpose, and that is laying the ground work for humans to walk on Mars, and im still betting 2016 for that.