I'm a rabid Mars colonization fanatic. However I've always been uncomfortable with the Mars Society. In theory as a foaming-at-the-mouth Mars fanatic, I'm obligated to be a member of the Mars Society (I'm not). However I've always had the concern that the Mars Society might "crash and burn". My concern stems from the following:

1) The Mars Society lives or dies based upon the performance of one guy, viz. Zubrin. I say this with reluctance because I'm a Zubrin fan.

2) The Mars Society was built upon the ruins of the "Case for Mars" biannual meetings. This was a very poor foundation. The Case for Mars meetings started out strong but got progressively flakey until it died an agonizing death.

3) The Mars Society was also built upon this "big tent" concept of advocates for colonization, straight planetary scientists, exobiologists, laymen and the lunatic fringe all functioning together in perfect harmony. The fallacy of this concept was demonstrated in the first meeting which ended in acromony over the nonsense issue of the ethics of rapidly terraforming Mars. Rapid terraformation of Mars is bullshit and arguing over it is like arguing about angels dancing on pins.

I've got my fingers crossed that someone is going to crawl out of the woodwork advocating Mars colonization based upon valid planetary science and nuts-and-bolts aerospace engineering. This same person will be saying "Not here please" to those who want to focus on Mars fungi, terraforming Mars, Mars related insanity (the Face), etc.

Gary