Barry claims no real research is being done then proves otherwise. If he owned a gun he wouldn't be around long.

For reference, the greenhab project was initiated and funded by a small group of MS members who do not do such work for a living. Not being trained sanitation engineers like Gil Levin they probably missed a few key factors. Build test and redesign is part of engineering. This is amateur engineering, but it is privately funded and the people involved will undoubtedly improve the design. The importance is not in the failure or cutting edge breakthroughs of such low budget projects, but even modest successes. When a small group of amateurs demonstrate they can build even semi-reliable and partially accurate analogues on a very modest budget, people will be far more confident that a well funded professional program will succeed.

As noted before and roundly ignored by those having great fun bashing the low cost MS start-up project, the habs have already generated interest in funding the far more rigorous, groundbreaking and fundamental translife mission http://www.marsgravity.org/index.php . Now private Space activist groups like the MS can start small and learn from failures and build on successes or they can publish nice magazines and fund little practical research and accomplish not much like TPS and the NSS have for decades. While I am a long term member of the later two organizations, as an engineer I am much fonder of the let's do what we can and learn from it approach. It should also be noted that TPS tackled a real space mission only after the upstart MS got far more publicity for actively pursuing exploration than searching for ETI has gotten TPS. It should also be noted that they have had quite a few failures. I don't mean to knock TPS, just point out that real science and engineering result from experimentation and learning from failure as well as success.

Regards,
Mark