Mark and the Mars Society defenders on this bbs---

I am not here to debate with you any longer. You are not interested in a real debate. You only want your views posted as evidenced by Mark Eby's comment "Look's like we finally found the secret to chase off Barry". So this then is your real intent, to prevent me and others who are onto your "Man on Mars club", from posting links, papers and abstracts which show human exploration of Mars is not possible now. In other words you don't want anyone to rain on your party.

So I am only going to post relevant space news and information about astrobiology and planetary protection themes to help balance the views on this bbs. Let the readers decide for themselves if the link or news is important.

I am not really interested in the Mars Society or people like you who only have one agenda -- to sell memberships to the Mars Society and to sell Zubrin's books. Everything you guys do involves money.

In my view there is no purpose for the Mars Society other than to have another type of fan club -- is this case a fan club for colonies of human beings on Mars. Even if the Mars Society had more members than it does (last convention it had only 800 or so showing up), you are never going to be able to fund a mission to Mars. So what's the point of it if not money?COSPAR, NASA and the ESA would never let a privately funded mission go to Mars because of the forward and back contamination hazard even if Bill Gates himself decided to use all his money to build a spaceship and go to Mars.

The real Mars Exploration organization is NASA, and until NASA decides to send humans to Mars, it will never happen, unless of course the Chinese decide to do it first. But even that is fifty to a hundred years away in our war dominated society.

I am all for exploration of Mars with robots as I have told you a thousand times, and I do not see any need to send humans on a dangerous trip to Mars in the near future.

If you and your Mars Society thinks "pretending" to be spacemen on Mars in Utah is a fun thing to do, then go off, put on your duct tape and canvas space suits and by all means have fun. It is not serious Mars research. NASA, the people with the real spacesuits, know for a fact the technology to keep humans in good health for a 6 month trip to Mars does not yet exist.

This will be my standard cut and paste response to all your posts.

BD