E.P. Grondine wrote:
You notice small errors, but not gross ones such as confusing the US desert South West with Mars.

Chris' reply:
Small errors? Your errors are not small ones!

Again I need to say...when did Bonestell paint those picture...the 1950s? This was before rockets had reached LEO let at alone Mars' surface. He also painted the Moon's surface as a rough and craggy when he knew better. He was an artist before being a scientist. His Martian sky even then should have been dark blue going up to black at the zenith. The geology he depicts is a close match for what is the actual appearance of Mars. The DESERT southwest is a pretty good match if you change the sky to include dust suspension. The things he couldn't know at the time were the atmosphere was way thinner and the ground had lots of rock debris because of this.

E.P. Grondine wrote:
As for delusions, which is to say avoiding reality, you can see evidence of the behaviour in the posts below, and those posts include your own.

Chris' reply:
So you don't know of any actual delusions I have. You seem to think people like von Braun and Bonestell should have foreknowledge for no reason! This is delusional. You think there is some NASA/Mars Society conspiracy going on! This is delusional.

E.P. Grondine wrote:
Now let us return to von Braun's Mars tractors, and his proposals to use in-situ Mars resources, such as he imagined them to be.

Chris' reply:
Hum, can I make this any clearer? As far as I know von Braun didn't plan the use of anything on Mars as ISRU. Unless you actually have evidence otherwise you are delusional here as well. Why are you so sure he would? It's like you're clueless about human behavior and history...??? He didn't think of it. As an engineer/scientist he wanted to be independent of any extra complications and he was not sure of his data and guesses. Would you bet the farm on Mars water when only fuzzy pictures of the caps existed and only a few rough analysis of the atmosphere had been made? And those analysis had very probably large errors in them?

--Chris Vancil