5/6/02 3:02:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Dear Mike and Kent:

It is becoming quite obvious by the number of disfavorable "Press
Stories" that someone does not want manned missions to Mars.

Kent, if you will remember last month I sent you the press release from
the robotics mission side of NASA that stated that the radiation dangers
of manned missions to Mars were too great. The article did not explain
why suddenly after 30 years of Mars probes, we are just now finding this
out.

Now comes this missive: http://www.rense.com/general24/eva.htm

This is just the latest in a series of articles, released in the last
ten days that states that manned missions to Mars are too dangerous from
a biological point of view.

This article is particular in that instead of harping on biological
unknowns, it harps of the chance of exposure to heavy metals.

Perhaps they figured out that last week when they were decrying the
danger of unknown biologicals, they were defacto admitting the strong
probability of life on Mars.

As I indicated in my email of last month, my sources at JSC indicate
there is a massive struggle being waged inside NASA between the JPL/NASA
robotics group and the Manned Space Flight Group.

It appears that the JPL faction is desperately trying to keep the budget
and fight the tide coming from DC to shift Mars to a manned target.

It belt tightening time and the JPL folks think they have to kill manned
missions to Mars, or face budget cuts because dollars get diverted to
Manned Space Flight.

One of the reasons the ISS was built was as a  launch and retrieval base
for Manned Missions to Mars. It would allow for off world quarantine of
returning explorers.

I expect things to continue to heat up and some great story to break
trying to prove anyone who goes to Mars will not survive.