It was the Pathfinder landing and the 6th International Conference on Mars that kindled my nascent interest in the Red Planet.

I've had my head down the past few years trying to earn a living but I've stayed mostly in touch.

Over the last decade I see a refreshing migration away from globally warm and wet models of Mars to much more local and occasional wet models, dominated by strong acid and salt solutions.

The "Mars Ocean" isn't dead yet - indeed it may ultimately be proven, but it isn't the simple thing many earlier workers suggested.

There's still too much emphasis, imho, on surface melting or subsurface aqueous fluids on modern Mars, but things are gradually moving away from the simple ideas of Earth-like streams.

Who knows. Maybe one day I'll get round to those CO2 experiments to actually generate a real gas-supported density flow, but until I do I accept that it's "not proven".

But so is Water on Mars...

meantime, let's all pick through the "astracts" (now usefully extended to 4 pages, rather than the constricting 2 of earlier years), and find some nuggets of interest.

Don't just point to stuff and say "Yah, boo! This proves my point". Try to explain WHY you think it proves your point. Planetary science is wriggly stuff. It doesn't pin down easily...