It's not a case of asking people to abandon their dreams so much a case of making people make their dreams achievable. I accept, though, that there is a fundamental political gulf between setting space priorities on what can be done cheaply with existing technology & going the big visionary approach; but i refuse to abandon political awareness simply to lie to people that i believe the Apollo-era madness could (or should) return. When you consider the extreme reluctance of the average Mars advocate to consider any other space target as suitable, i think my reluctance to talk soothingly about >their< sexy beast is rather restrained, actually; but for the record: i expect that launching small, simple missions to the NEOs first will make a manned Mars mission more likely quicker than just pushing a big, Apollo-class rush to the Red Planet (& am certain that such a hasten slowly approach will improve the odds of sustainable manned Mars program existing within my own lifetime)... unfortunately, with money tight & technology primitive, i would rather not have the agenda cluttered by targets which can't be flown & funded just to be politically nice.

I, too, have a strongly political background; & well know the old Woody Allen principle that if you don't have the people, you ain't going to get the revolution.

>Does it make more sense to work with people with different (but ultimately compatible) long-term goals by convincing them that those goals will be served by short-term projects? Or are we going to waste more bandwidth calling each other stupidheads, dreamers, and spendthrifts?

For the record, i didn't use any of these expressions, although i would acknowledge that i consider the average Mars advocate a political dreamer... i did use the expression true believer, though. I didn't - & don't - call people stupidheads (lystrosaurs, occasionally; but not stupidheads) or spendthrifts, either (the biggest problem i have on the budgetside with Mars advocates isn't so much that a few believe a big expensive manned Mars will be flown but that most refuse to consider the possibility that the budgets really will be that large... mostly because believers inevitably underestimate the costs involved in developing space technology, because they're relying heaviliy on partizan statements about our technological capacity to judge the issue).

... but to stress something which probably shouldn't have to be stressed: that i assess the average Mars advocate to be wrong in this matter doesn't mean that i consider them stupid - i just consider them wrong. It >is< possible to be smart & wrong, you know; & it's also possible to be stupid & right.

Robert.