Now let's talk about the real Mars...

First off, there's not going to be any manned mission to Mars until the back-contamination problem is answered pretty fully. Period. Even if the Planetary Protection Officer signs off, its still going to take NIH, CDC, NRC, NSF, and EPA approval or consent. Otherwise no go.

You can try all the hand-waving and jump and shout proofs you want, but they won't work, at least not beyond any space bbs. You can also attack Barry, but that won't work for long either, as there are simply too many people you will have to attack.

So what you need is long range rovers, and guess what? Due to the long communication times, these can not be operated tele-robotically, except from Mars orbit, a la Marse Piat, and that's not in the cards.

So what you need is an artificially intelligent robotic vision system, and until the Japanese get a little bit better, my friend Dr. Usikov's got you by the short and curlies - smile... All you need to do is come up with about $30 million or so and the show goes on the road...

Otherwise, we go to 2003, and find out then that operating Mars rovers from the Earth is impractical. Baring the raising of $30 million from private entertainment companies, or a real improvement in US robotic work, that leaves Japan for 2007.

Assume that the back-contamination problem turns out to be no problem, which is a HUGE assumption, say sometime after 2010. Then you still don't have any heavy or medium lift vehicle to do the job, as the Re-usable Launch Vehicle has been stopped, largely due to the continual attacks by Tumlinson and his Space Frontier Foudation and his cronies.

Assume that somehow the greater public awareness created by the images returned by the rovers of exactly what a wasteland Mars is still allows Mars enthusiasts to raise money for a manned mission. This is a big assumption, as after Apollo the public quickly lost interest in the Moon.

Also, you've assumed that the nation is not in the throws of a sever economic crisis brought on by reliance on portable liquid fuels.

So we go to 2015 developing a cheap heavy lifter and the manned Mars craft.

What do get when we get there?
A relatively dry planet continually blasted by radiation. The remainder of the public which still has any interest in Mars looses it, except for a few die hard escapists, the same thing that happened with Apollo.

EP