[meadsjn]

"Crew members will be isolated at great distances from Earth with long lag times in communication. They'll be crowded into close quarters. They will be in danger and their sleep will be degraded," Frey said.

No biggy -- just find a conservative who has survived several years in a liberal urban environment. Real outer-space would be a relief.

[LibWhacker]

I KNOW it would drive me nuts being locked up in a tin can with a bunch of other people for several years. And it'd probably be worse if I were alone. That's one of the many reasons I wouldn't be a good candidate for a Mars mission -- at least insofar as such missions are envisioned today. In fact, anybody who could tolerate those conditions would be quite suspect in my eyes . . . I mean, just how much of a misfit would a person have to be in order to put up with it?

IMO, the only sensible thing to do is to bring back Project Orion and send a ship the size of a very large skyscraper, weighing a few million tons, shielded with three or four feet of solid steel plating, manned with a crew of thousands perhaps, hauling on board with them fleet of a hundred rovers, as well as many, many tens of thousands of tons of construction equipment and material, all to be launched in one shot directly from the surface of the Earth, then powering its way to Mars in a few weeks, finally landing in toto on the surface of the Red Planet and disgourging its contents of busy little bees. It can be done. It's not science fiction. They were going to do something like it in the early 60s, and knew how. But nascent environmental Luddism prevented it, blast it to all Hell.

BRING BACK ORION!!!