"1) Aldrin himself admits his cycler concept is incompletely worked out.

2) The resources required may be an efficient way to colonize Mars, but not to explore it.

Are you ready to commit to colonizing Mars?"

Why else send crew to Mars unless you:
1) You want to *at least* explore the possiblity of future colonization.
Or:
2) Want to pretend NASA is doing something important by putting on "The Show of Flags and Footprints".

If you already know that NASA won't take the neccessary steps in order to establish "anything" serious on Mars- there is no need to worry about such ideas as a cycler- just go for your one or two manned missions, then declare victory. Also you can then spend the rest of your life whining about "if only the public understood the importance of space exploration".

If you were truely serious about colonizing Mars you would work towards getting the infrastructure that would help make this possible. E.g., some spacecraft which tested out the orbit required for such a cycler. I don't know what this spacecraft would do other than only this- perhaps a technology demonstrator like DS-1, or maybe something to do with exploring NEOs, or maybe some kind of communication networks for Mars, or whatever.