Hi Mark -

With your problems with your job and child's health, I would advise you not to spend any time on space - BUT I realize it is an escape for you from current troubles - a topic to relax on and dream - and thus the relaxation allows you to better face life's difficulties.

Space is different for me.

It's 2005 - a long way from September 26, 1998. Newt is out of office now; Anderson is in prison on tax evasion charges; and Morrison has just had his co-author abandon the position he held in the papers he wrote with him. Morrison was a pioneer, talking about the impact hazard when no one else was, but tragically he made a serious error on injection mechanisms and the cometary impact threat - if he will just stand aside now, and become an eminence gris, instead of further hampering work on cometary impact, he has a chance of retiring gracefully, with respect -

Returning to the Moon is the next NASA task after the space station... but it is not at all clear that the US will lead this effort - what happens in US foreign relations over the next several months will be critical, and there is nothing for me to do right now but wait and see how things turn out...

as for myself, I am very tired right now - I have always admitted my errors, and I am making a lot of them now - that is what the HZ is for for me, not for escape, but a place to be wrong, to work out ideas before publication - by the way, in regard to Mars "blueberries", the spherule formation mechanism is now demonstrated on Earth, in regard to the KT impact - but the Coumbia crew cabin disintegration story has yet to hit - my guess is everyone is waiting for return to flight to run that one...

Another role that HZ plays for me is as a human filter of space news -

Mark, there are 200 million people in this country, and you're one of them. If I got worked up and wasted my time every time some nut came along with some ax to grind, say like manned flight to Mars, then I would not have much time left to do my own work. One of my current problems has been finding a way of quickly diverting them that does not further enrage them, nor offer them the chance for further engagement -

People have different widely varying and conflicting opinions, and that's one of the things that makes life interesting. Live with it and enjoy it.

ep