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Looked for NASA mention of this, didn't see it. Didn't see NASA mentioned here, either.

That's because NASA is a cumbersome, visionless, incompetent bureaucracy which would have a difficult time organizing a manned mission to break out of a wet paper bag.. Look for either the Euros or the Chinese to be the first to Mars, probably in a joint mission - with an honorary Russian thrown in for PR purposes..

Russia is naturally a part of Euroland: it's just a matter of time until ESA and RSA join up in a limited partnership. Look for China and America to link up later on.

NASA's working model collapses without some form out outside political support. They need competition from the Chinese to stimulate political support for national security reasons. Even then, the minute the "threat" is perceived to be over, they will scale back to bureaucracy maintenance mode.

NASA is simply not capable of building the infrastructure necessary for meaningful space exploration, or even encourage its development. Heck, you think DOD is bad with $2000 dollar toilet seats? With NASA every detail is a multi-million dollar publicity stunt. The fictional legend of the NASA pen and Russian pencil hits on a greater truth.