Let me make clear first of all that I was never an official member of a "lock-the-doors" site selection meeting. Nonetheless I had the opportunity to feed my own views through key members of the community and had discussions with all the right people at the right time.

Essentially, our views are similar - we need to examine places on Mars where fluids have flowed, as recently as possible, to examine the chemical and physical consequences and so type the fluids.

In terms of where to look - I'd love to land in the Athabasca valles where there are varied signs of fluid interaction with rocks.

I would have liked to see Beagle 2 survive, since the tuff cones there present an enigma and a potential test of cold vs hot models.

I want to see a polar lander, too, and one that melted down through the polecap to examine the ice composition and layering would be way cool, but needs RTG's for the heat and for longevity through a polar winter.

And now, based on new information, I'd like to land in that "delta" in Holden North Crater and sample the weathered-out 'sandstones" or whatever they are to see what's cementing them and what they're made up of.

All the above require precision landers and more survivability.

I think the whole community would agree on these sites too, because they encapsulate the debate about timing and nature of fluids and cements.

My prediction is that the next (non-polar) lander will go for Holden North.

As for what we can see in Gusev, the problem with craters is that when they are fresh enough to have good exposures, the exposure is on the inside of the rim (go visit Barringer Crater, Az. for a lesson). No rover we've got can get into a crater and down to the cliffs to see what they are made of.

So we have to find either an eroded hill, or a lump of ejecta from a crater. The ejecta will tend to be smashed-up and may be hard to prove which crater it came from and what depth, but sampling an ejecta apron for "different" rocks could be useful and pay-off within the mission lifetime. We have the advantage of good "aerial" photography and (with the descent imagery) a great fix on where exactly we landed this time, so can navoigate to a debris field from a known crater.

There will, however, be a tradeoff between choosing a big crater (dug deep, lots of variety of rocks, bigger rocks) with a smaller one (closer to the rover, probably, More navigable over the sparser, smaller ejecta and probably younger). You'll see a lot of debate from the science team around these tradeoffs as they plan the primary and then extended mission.

Finally, I'd love to see bedded evaporites proven on Mars, since that makes the planet's history exciting for life. I just don't think it's a likely outcome. (because they probably aren't there, not that we can't find them)