We've all seen Doug and RL's little smear campaign, and we know that it is intentional. The intentional misquotes, the intentional baseless insults, the pretensions...

Apparently they are of the opinion that somehow this little smear campaign is going to enhance the possibilities of their continued employment in aerospace. Perhaps they need to talk to Gary about this, as he has plenty of time to discuss it with them.

Now I've been fairly nasty myself, and I actually called Alex Blackwell a "swindler". I mean, it's a great gig, sitting in Hawaii, trying to persuade people that Mars is Earth-like, all the while violating the simple laws of physics, and in addition, doing it all on the government dime, which is to say with tax money from everybody's pocket.

But perhaps I was mistaken: perhaps Blackwell is so delusional that he actually is unaware the he regularly violates the laws of physics in his work.

That said, things are unfolding pretty much as I expected: the precursor missions to manned Mars flight are showing that Mars is not Earth-like, and public demand for manned Mars flight falls with every new image from the MERs. As public demand falls, the remaining Mars "enthusiasts" fight among themselves.

In my view, the only way to Mars will be via the Moon, and the only thing that may sell the Moon is its use as a place to put NEO detectors. Mars will not be colonized or terra-formed, and it will be a tough fight to even get something like the antartic research stations built there.

The time I spend dealing with the smear campaign takes away from the time I could use to justify using the Moon to deal with the NEO hazard. I'm going to have to find a quicker and more effective way to deal with smear campaigns in general.

ep