Jumping the Gun.

> From: Ed Minchau [mailto:spider_boris@...]

> How about the $1 trillion pricetag that keeps appearing for the moon
> and mars missions? Same thing, some reporter made up the number by
> using NASA's grandest vision for Bush Sr.'s space plan, counting the
> moon base twice, then adding $200 billion. Yet this totally
> erroneous number keeps appearing as the cost of a manned mission to
> mars alone...

That's a combination of journalistic exaggeration, public gullibility and political mud-slinging. The writers like huge sums of money, as 'warning the public' about them sells papers. The public knows so little about NASA's actual operations that it actually swallows it. And the Far Right Party and the Other Far Right Party (I forget - which one is in power now?) love it because it's yet another thing they can use to make the current president look a little dim, and their candidate smart.

Against all that what chance does the truth have?

ANTIcarrot.
PS: Near as I can tell, Mars could be done for roughly $5B with something like the shuttle-C.