It may not fit your desired mission profile to a "T", but then in the real world we all gotta make sacrifices in order to achieve the majority of our goals.

If it is really that "easy" to get to Mars relative to re-establishing a human presence on the Moon, then our Mars flyby will probably take place much sooner than Bush's current plan calls for...Wouldn't that be a hoot: NASA doing something way ahead of schedule!!!

Then we could design a truely cutting edge Mars landing program.

I think the current plan is to take it slow, but with reasonable steps and goals along the way. The biggest reason for this is budgetary...Bush and nobody else can justify throwing $100 Billion at NASA over the next 10 years as would be required under a Mars Direct mission profile.

In otherwords, its done this way not because Bush or Nasa think that would be the most efficient from an engineering standpoint, but rather because that is the only method that has a chance in hell of getting through congress. The federal govennment's methods aren't the most efficient...That's really not a new surprise!

We will get to Mars eventually under Bush's plan. Until Bush announced the plan we were stuck on the ISS. If you truely want to see humans on Mars in your lifetime, work with the plan not against it. I'm sure NASA will be more than happy to incorporate Zubrin's and (anybody else's ideas) assuming they have merit and so long as they don't require a complete trashing of this plan before it even gets going...And the good news is that is exactly what appears to be happening: The last I heard, the majority of the Mars Socieety folks, Zubrin included, are lining up behind Bush's plan...Great for them!

Look if some remote Island in Canada can provide a valid test ground for Mars, then so can the Moon. And there is more than enough real science that can be done on the moon to justify it as a destination by itsself, even if we took Mars entirely out of the equation.

Mars will happen, but we will do the Moon first--Because its there.

Scott Evil