Discover magazine's nattering nabob of negativism

I flew home yesterday from New Jersey (having spent a week there with my folks). I was a little short of reading material for the flight home so I bought the September issue of Discover magazine. The cover story is on NASA's new manned space exploration program and the writer of the article was a David H. Freedman. I thought the article was by-and-large pretty negative and kind of missed the point about why human settlement of the Solar System is crucial if we are to survive as a species. First off, the guy never missed an opportunity to inflate cost estimates about what it will take to get people to the Moon and then on to Mars. Now, if things are done in the NASA "business as usual" mode, and unfortunately, that is the way it is by-and-large looking now, then inflating cost estimates is probably appropriate. Still, I would have liked to have seen the article give some mention to Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" mission architecture and how that could be used to reach Mars "on the cheap". Even when Freedman quotes Elon Musk's claim that he could get people to Mars for $5 billion, he has to immediately shoot him down with THE "nattering nabob of (science) negativism" himself - John Pike who says "oh, you couldn't do a multi-person Mars mission for less than $100 billion". Sigh. For me the kicker was the way Freedman ended the article- in essence saying that a worthy goal for the space program would just be to launch space probes and "save the Earth" (whatever that means). Again... sigh. The real goal of all our space efforts should be to build a human civilization in Space. Sure, along the way, I want robotic missions to Mars and other solar system bodies. That has GOT TO BE part of it, but an overarching purpose has got to be to get people out there on a permanent basis, and the best way to do that probably doesn't involve government. Instead it involves a healthy private space program and a diversity of launch systems. I think there is promise there with companies like Musk's SpaceX and the various nascent space tourism companies. To be fair, Freedman's article does mention those companies, but I don't think he puts them in the right context. In short, I don't think Freedman really "gets it".