http://www.nasawatch.com

After years of supporting Rick Tumlinson and his Space Frontier Foundation in their efforts to kill ISS by presenting the aged Mir as an viable alternative to it, nasawatch owner, editor, and sole staff writer Keith Cowing has had a change of mind. Currently busy playing Mars explorer by driving gas powered vehicles around the artic while dressed in a canvas space suit, Cowing took time off from his busy schedule briefly enough to call Tumlinson "nutty" and to ask him to "shut up".

The piece marks yet another first, as the first bit of intelligent commentary nasawatch editor/owner/writer Cowing has ever authored. Following years of vicious personal attacks by Cowing on Daniel Goldin, the most ardent advocate of manned Mars flight to hold the post of Administrator for many years, it is believed that the appointment of Sean OKeefe as NASA Administrator, and Okeefe's rather total indifference to manned Mars flight, has had a calming effect on Cowing and allowed him to return to some form of sanity.

Following on the break between Cowing and Bob Zubrin of the Mars Society as it does, this new break marks yet another major step in the inevitable fragmentation of the Mars "enthusiasts" into groups desparately arguing with each other about how to perfrom a manned flight to Mars, a task which the general public cares less and less about with each passing year.

ep