Hello Raoul -

Thanks for the link - it looks like great fun.

The key problem here is that all of this took place before Viking - when people could still hope Mars was a very Earth-like planet.

It isn't.

The "Mars enthusiasts" of today can best be considered as the remaining faithful, those who still desperately hold on to the hope of an Earth-like Mars by using the most unusual and intense of mental defense mechanisms.

On the other hand, public awareness of the hazard that asteroid and cometary impact present to people here on Earth was essentially nil during the 1950's. This no longer holds today.

The result will most likely be that the immediate priorities for manned space flight will change:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/lunar_caps_011212-1.html

or see

http://www.geocities.com/epgrondine

for a possible architecture for an earlier and less expensive variant.

Hopefully, the possible barriers to manned Mars flight will be studied and found not to be insurmountable during the period of the construction of these lunar facilites.

But as this process of examining the restraints will take several decades, it is pretty well pointless to spend much money on system studies for manned Mars flight until after those questions are answered.

My hope is that everything turns out okay for manned Mars flight, but in the meantime remember that compared to dreams, reality bites -

ep