First of all, had you responded in a detailed way originally like you just did, instead of just making a couple condescending insults directed at me, I would not have gotten angry. I don't mind being shown how I could be wrong. I do mind the tone and manner it is delivered. Perhaps I jumped the gun deleting those posts but I was pretty angry and actually I did it to prevent myself from replying very harshly, which I was feeling compelled to do.

Now, other than the AI post I made, I DID state in detail my reasoning for what I believed. It's in the earlier posts. ER even said my points were detailed and well made but he just didn't agree.

As I have said, there are two important points: 1. Viking's failure caused a two decade lapse in Mars exploration. 2. Budgets OBVIOUSLY have an influence over mission planning. Do you deny these two things? I have also said several times in this thread that what I was talking about is not a "conspiracy". I even said that in the title of one of my posts on this thread. For sure, no scientist would want to drag out their investigation of potential life in the solar system. I agree that makes no sense from their perspective. But for long term NASA budget planners who are not scientists and whose job it is to secure funding from Congress and the White HOuse, it might make sense. Try to get out of scientist mode for a minute and think about that.

Thank you for the detailed info about Dragonfly and its payload. It does seem like this is a good mission that could produce results. But how many times have we sent missions to Mars just looking for "the conditions to support life" without instruments like what's on Dragonfly? We've done the same with Europa missions even though they are typically a decade or two apart. What would make sense to me from both a science and budget standpoint would be a standardized suite of life searching instruments on EVERY lander/rover we send out.

Yes I'm not an expert and I appreciate your long post explaining your knowledge on the topic. That may be time consuming but it is much better than two or three sentence comments that are essentially "you're wrong; that's stupid; you're a flat earther". I actually have very thick skin but you got under it that time.

OK I apologize for overreacting.