Mr Vancil,

"Barry and Ed don't care to debate. "

This is not a debate,

It is a display of abnormal psychological functioning by a few individuals fixated on sending men to Mars.

When confronted with facts, their reaction is either
1) to ignore them, or
2) respond with invective.

And by the way, I am still awaiting an apology from you for your earlier insults in response to my observations on the Columbia disaster.

"You got to ask your self why do Barry and Ed really attack the Mars Society and anyone interested in manned missions to Mars. Why are they trying to marginalize us? I don't think it is their stated reasons..."

First off, I like and admire Bob Zubrin, and many other manned Mars enthusiasts - it's just your own personal behavior that I find appalling.

Seceond, I am not trying to marginalize you: You already are marginal; I am merely pointing it out.

Let me state my reasoning once again.

First, you have to remember that I spent roughly 2 years of my life attempting to acquire long range rover technology for the US, so that the back contamination problem could be cleared to satisfaction.

I am not against manned Mars flight, just against manned Mars flight RIGHT NOW. We have got to secure the safety of the citizens of our nation against the impact hazard FIRST, and then we can do manned Mars flight, IF it is possible.

Finally, you "Mars Enthusiasts" don't have the votes to do manned Mars flight right now - but we can get the votes to build lunar telescopes to find the next comet or small asteroid well before it hits - and hopefully that will keep the manned flight infrastructure in place until either 1) the costs of manned Mars flight falls, or 2) the public demand for manned Mars flight rises.

ep

Barry's claims of danger of contamination are like some medieval priest pontificating on flight..."we can't build a heavier than air machine that can fly like the birds. That is a simple fact!" The whole point of sending people to Mars is it will stretch our ablities. It will introduce us to new ways of thinking about all sort of things like dust, life, materials science and it will create a need for more engineers and scientists.

The contamination of Earth or Mars is avoidable with more knowledge of the red planet and what is needed to protect us and Mars, if it