I not only have in my possetion but have even read at least two of Zubrin's excellent books. Also, I think that he has one of the best ideas that I can think of for making any manned Mars mission a lot less expensive, and that is his living of the land approach!<br /><br />However, he is not infallable, his estimates for the cost of a manned mission are an absolute riot! He is off by a minimum factor of at least five, when he thinks that such a mision can be done for only $20 billion! I can certainly not see it being done for less than either the total cost of the ISS, or the total cost of the CEV (about $100 billion) and it may even be at least twice that figure (some 10x Zubrin's costs)!<br /><br />I do not even oppose all of gaet's thinking itself. But that is irrevelent now isn't it? NASA and Mike Griffin are going to do what NASA thinks is right, every bit as much as you tell gaet to do! Somehow I think that NASA just might have a little more experience in these areas than gaet does (or myself for that matter)!<br /><br />Your total opposition to the ISS itself is going to also go nowhere, as the US congress wishes to honor what our nation has told others that we are going to do! I happen to believe that most of the people of this great country support NASA's present course of:<br /><br />Retiring the shuttle, finishing up our end of the ISS, and building the CEV as presently constituted. If this wasn't the case then congress would have told Mike Griffin by now!<br /><br />As for the space elevators, I have always supported this idea. My support goes back even as far as Arthur C. Clark's excellent novel about such in "The Fountains of Paradice". But I, like many others on here realize that this idea will quite probably take far longer than at least I have to live to come into full realization, but I do hope that full elevators all the way out to GEO will eventually make space access available for just about anybody!! Then, true epace colonization such as envi