I posted most of this over at MSNBC, but I added a few comments with regard to comments here.

I was on the resignation letter distribution list for
Marc Boucher. He is the longest serving board member to resign. Kim Robinson was the coauthor of the Mars' Society's founding declaration and an original steering committee member. I have never heard of Eric Tilenius.

Musk's status as a board member is unclear. He was
supposedly added after offering to donate 10 million.
There appears to be a disagreement over to what he
actually agreed to and whether or not he ever was a board member.

The immediate issue which caused Marc's resignation was Musk's offer. Zubrin's unilateral handling of the issue upset those expecting the Mars Society to have moved on to a more democratic form of leadership. This brought to a head long standing concerns over the degree of democracy within the Mars Society. He said he thought Kim had similar concerns but did not know his exact reasons for resigning. I know personally that Kim was very interested in democratizing the society back in 1999 when I was part of the movement to do so.

It appears that Marc and probably Kim remain supportive of the Mars Society and are taking this action solely as a wake up call with regard to Zubrin's management style. In addition, there were other issues with regard to management style which I feel are internal matters.

I'll elaborate slightly here. Marc sited an overall lack of professional management as well. I firmly believe Maggie and Robert are pooring their heart and soul into the Mars Society, but the simply are taking on too much to handle by themselves and do not seem to use constructive criticism effectively.

From the beginning I told Robert that the MS would fail if it was nothing but a cheering section for him. I was very disturbed that there was so little member input in what was supposed to be a founding convention, but was more of a case for Mars conference sequal. Robert assured me that member involvement was a high priority. He had never seen or heard from me before so I thought he took the criticism well.

Since then I have been absolutely amazed by how much Zubrin has managed to accomplish in terms of funding and publicitly primarily through his own efforts.
At the same time I have been extremely dissapointed in the lack of member activity and input. I have to agree with Frank that a whole lot of effort has been put into trivial or far future needs. The Mars Socity needs a clear cut stepwise plan of action and a better focus on near term needs. I think Zubrin has this personally and with regard to the projects he is closely involved with, but spends far to little time on how to make the rest of the society productive.

The Society has no real focus or action plan outside of a few key and high visibility projects. We have a political action committee doing a bangup job of notification, but too few members for it to have any significant impact. Growth in membership has not been a strong focus in my opinion and it is a fundamental requirement in my mind to meet the society's long term objectives.

I am renewing my membership and will continue to work on the areas I see as key needs, but will switch to trying to be active in the NSS if I don't see an improvement in the way the MS is run over the next year.

Regards,
Mark