I agree that there is value in getting more data from almost anywhere on Mars. To an extent, I wasn't concerned *where* we landed this time, since we were bound to learn *something* important.

Nonetheless, we could have learned more if we'd thought more carefully about where and why to land. I'm concerned that we're running too fast and wasting the opportunity to learn better.

For instance:

Laurel Kirkland - a respected and experienced member of the IR sensing community, indeed one might describe her as one of its pillars - She has been trying to get the message through for at least a year that fine-grained consolidated coatings of Haematite are a *better* match to the orbital spectra than is coarse grey haematite. If she'd been listened to, we might have found a better area to explore.

Mike Malin - a pillar of the orbital imaging community - He has published an analysis of Gusev stating bluntly that the putative lacustrine deposits are buried under a thick layer of later material, probably volcanics, and that we would be unlikely to find chance exposures.

Both these scientists have been proven right.

I think the olivine dust evidence is proving *me* right in so far as the most recent billion years of Mars history.

What really matters, though is the FIRST billion years. We need to find out ways to ask the right questions, and the places to find the answers, without getting carried away by stupid chases after life and water (but only in boringly safe landing spots), unless we can go to the really interesting places:-

1) Athabasca - recent fluid flows and volatile activity - what were the fluids and volatiles?
2) Holden North - an exhumed delta with eroding "sandstone" - what were the fluids, the grains, and the cement holding them together?
3) Isidis - what are those "tuff cones" that cross the whole basin?
4) Hellas basin - what is on the floor of the deepest hole on Mars? What are the peculiar "honeycomb" terrains made of
5) Sisyphi Cavi - what is flowing down those slopes every springtime?
6) Polar caps - what is the vertical structure of the ice? What is the CO2/H2O ratio, are there annual layers and a climate history? How thick is the ice anyway? (MARSIS may answer this in a few months' time)