Hello Nick -

You have at last stumbled into a field in which I do have some expertise, and even better yet have managed to make some major blunders - but I'll try to be kind...

What makes you think that any one nation will be able to go to Mars by itself, and that manned Mars flight will not be an international cooperative effort? Even if a variant of Zubrin's Mars Direct were chosen as the architecture, in other words accepting some of Zubrin's most extravagant engineering claims, do you really think that the legislators of any one country will wish to finance manned Mars flight solely through the taxes paid by their constituents?

As an aside, do you really think good international relations are unimportant? Unless there is a relatively peaceful world, military expenditures are likely to remain so high that financing a manned Mars flight will remain off the table. Remember, the expenditures necessary for the Vietnam War did a lot to end lunar exploration with Apollo.

Continuing with the main points once again, what makes you think that it won't be necessary to build a manned Mars ship in Earth orbit? Do you really think any government is going to finance the construction of a single use launcher of sufficient size to do manned Mars flight with one launch, as in Zubrin's Mars Direct, while at the same time letting its communication satellite launch industry go?

What makes you think that the a manned Mars ship will not have life support systems? What makes you think that the improvements in automating life support systems, improvements which will be developed and tested on ISS, will not be necessary for a manned Mars ship?

What makes you think that researchers in the material sciences and biological sciences will be unable to use a micro-gravity facility? Pointing to the current state is not really fair, as ISS is just starting - and even given that, Japan has all of its research space already booked -

Do you really think that any other international organization other than NASA will be able to organize a manned Mars mission? Think a project of that scale, of that difficulty, of that risk, could be done by a commerical firm on its own dime? Think any corporate manager could be that stupid, and his investors as well? Zubrin doesn't - that's why he formed a scoiety to lobby for government funds, instead of a commercial firm to seek investors. And for all his vacuous free market rhetoric, the same goes for Tumlinson.

Finally, how could you expect any payback unless all countries agree on the ownership of Mars? Do you think that ownership would be recognized if a manned Mars mission were done by one country? What are you thinking? Raise the flag and its yours? That might have worked in Australia a couple of hundred years ago, as the native population did not have firearms, but in the modern world do you really think that product embargoes would not be mounted immediately?

Ah well, given that its sometime after Saturday night in Australia, a certain amount of fizzy thinking can be expected.

EP