EP wrote: The problem with the radiation on Mars is that it is high enough that man will be unable to terra-form the planet.

This is not what you suggested. You said: "We now know that Mars does not have much of atmosphere (its close to a vacuum), very very little water, and further more is regularly bathed by immediately lethal amounts of radiation coming from our Sun."

Astronauts on Mars would not be "regularly bathed by immediately lethal amounts of radiation" unless they were unable to detect solar flares or were fatally stupid. BTW, we have known from the 1970s of the mbars Martian atmosphere and how much water is in or on Mars is still an unknown.

EP wrote: You could immediately generate a significant atmosphere on Mars by steering an impactor into its surface, (and this has happened before naturally) , but without a magnetic field, any life that is then established on the surface of Mars will immediately perish in the next major solar radiation event.

We aren't the people who might terraform Mars. Future spacefares wanting to terraform Mars will have a better knowlegde of it's resourses and better technologies to use in terraforming if they so choose. BTW, there is presently at least one way to generate a magnetic bubble big enough to encompass a goodly part of Mars.

EP wrote: Under this circumstance, the most that could be done would be the construction of a sub-surface resarch station about the size of an Antartic base, or several of them.

Exactly why? Because you say so? Future peoples could build "mall cities" in lava tubes or caverns on Mars that would contain hundreds of millions of people if they so wished. This might cause problems if later they wanted to terraform the planet, but that would be their problem not ours.

EP wrote: But the desire for a new land has been one of the driving factors, if not THE driving factor, for manned space efforts from their very start. Given that Mars can not be turned into an Earth-like planet, this motivator for nearly all Mars research immediately disappears.

It is a false conclusion based only on your desire to redirect interest in Mars to some place else.

EP wrote: In other words, manned flight to Mars requires the funding of SOCIETIES as a whole. Given that LARGE NUMBERS of people will never go to Mars, the desire of any SOCIETY to fund those flights immediately disappears.

You haven't established that manned Mars exploration requires funding from "SOCIETIES as a whole" . I assume you mean govenrment or governments instead of SOCIETIES. BTW, random use of the caps lock key is usually a signture of a crank.

EP wrote: Complicating things further, some space advocates are now focusing on manned flight to Mars to the exclusion of all other manned uses of space. Since manned Mars is a dead end on the level of SOCIETIES, in effect they are walking the entire manned space program into a dead end.

Are you one of "Gerry's kids" an O'Neiller?

--CLV