I’ve been following Elmo’s reporting on the Mars One mission with deep fascination. It’s an engrossing saga about the disconnect between big dreams and harsh realities.

The Mars One boosters seem to be very defensive about the very real and difficult obstacles to a Mars mission and rather than tackling these serious issues head on, there’s obfuscation, avoidance, anger and accusations of contrarianism. But unfortunately, not a lot of real answers.

When there’s this much back-tracking and lack of transparency, we can only conclude that this is a project that is spiraling downward quickly. To keep this dream alive, it should be left to the real experts and engineers at NASA to come up with a realistic plan (if one exists) and not in the hands of enthusiasts.