The folks who grew up on the fictions of Wells, Burroughs, George Pal, von Braun, Disney and Collier's is dying off.

They are "being replaced" by a generation raised on the reality of the Mariners, the Vikings, Pathfinder, Global Surveyor and Odyseey.

I can safely predict with some certainty that this trend will continue.

gb, I think you're exactly right about the ISS being the manned Mars mission in its current state of development - but based on several years of intensive research, I think that during the current period of time the impact hazard is far higher than is generally realized. Thsu what I think may happen is that the tchnologies developed in ISS may be used to develop Moon basd astronomical facilities before they are used for manned Mars flight

ep