old ideas dying
No question that the passing of MGS will end a lot of the watery Mars press releases we've been treated to for quite a while now.
If you noticed, Mars Express did a lot to end watery Mars with its first major announcement. IMO, given Mars Express, the MRO announcements are actually going to have to be scientific.
The other point for optimism is that the impact rate on Mars is high enough to actually be watched in just a few years via orbiters, and we have 2 of them in Mars orbit now.
