Here's the numbers, Chris:

Every 10 year old who saw either Deep Impact or Armageddon when those movies first came out will be able to vote in the next election.

Nearly every 5 year old feels a certain amount of powerlessness, and they become fascinated with the most physically powerful animals which ever existed, the dinosaurs. They treasure plastic models of dinosaurs, and they often play games in which they immitate dinsosaurs. Every television documentary and book on the dinosaurs now ends in exactly the same way, with all of the dinosaurs, every single one of them, being blown off the face of the Earth by the massive impact of a piece of stuff from space. (I was going to say "shit" here instead of "stuff", but for some reason I thought it would be better to use a more technical term.) An Extinction Level Event, so to speak.

It has been this way since the mid 1970's. All of those 5 year olds now vote.

It's a sad fact, and one difficult to face, but you and Mark's generation, which is among those generations who were children in the 1950' and earlier, those generations which were raised on science fiction which featured an Earth-like Mars, are dying. At best, these people are quitting the Mars Society and joining the AARP.

There were no more similar generations raised after Mariner IV sent back its images of the surface of Mars in 1964. That's why so much science fiction since then has been set in a galaxy which is far, far away.

Asteroid Apophis is coming in under the communication satellites in 2029, and right now noe one knows where it will end up afterwards.

Back to the Moon, this time to stay, and then on, on to Mars

EP