My apologies to Marc. The K is rather a habit for me and I haven't seen his name much lately.

I am well aware of Cowings negative feelings towards Zubrin. He had them long before Zubrin's latest series of mistakes. The point is whether you disagree with someone or not leaving out positive contributions is not fair reporting.

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Fear of failure leads to stagnation. Technology and approaches must be tried before their effectiveness can truly be known. Even failures deserve second chances when there are obvious opportunities for improvement or even just a gut feel that there has to be a way to make it work. What is wrong is to make the same mistakes over and over whether it be in reporting, use of technology, or management style without ever admitting a failure in the first place.

No improvement can be made without first admitting one is needed. Failure to take criticism constructively is one of the things that greatly diminishes the effectiveness of anyone that demonstrates it. Working out disagreements rather than ignoring them is part of what separates effective groups from ineffective ones. Making the other side persona nongrata is just stupid. I'm dealing with a similar situation at work. The easy thing would be to ignore it. I won't.

As for the effectiveness of the greenhouse, that falls under a needs to be tried category to me. Failure are likely. Learning how to overcome them is part of its value. Of course native hunters are not likely to be a hazard on Mars. No analogy is perfect. I stand by my praise of their contribution.

Regards,
Mark