That is pretty much what JPL did.

This is why I believe first manned mission to mars should require staying at least 10-16 years. Hate to say it, but canary in a coal mine. As to these samples, I would think that most microbes on mars are already here. Still I would prefer that extreme caution used and collect these earth or even lunar orbit, and test at iSS.

Offering up a competition to do this is not the way to go. Why? Because a JPL designed approach was already offered up and this is why we are looking at $8-11B to deliver in 15 years.

Need a prize approach in a set of objectives are listed and variable-level prize rewarded based on ranking. Get it done first, and you get $$$, with second getting $. Finally, upon successful return of Up to 1/2 of the samples, they get $ 3B/1B. Finally, limit this to 2-3 groups register for this.

With this approach, it will likely have SX and BO as entities, but it may also produce a 3rd group. This way, a great deal of infrastructure gets quickly developed and will be reused later for Martian/lunar/asteroids missions.

Hopefully, no federal $ is going into this. Or perhaps federals SHOULD produce some $, but require that all of the cells be made in america, with american, if not western elements.

Seriously, some of it, esp. the early stuff is interesting. A lot of words, poetry. Now? Just junk with a lot of cuss words esp the n-word, and is just garbage.

It used to be that we were full of hope, but prepared for the worst. Now, we have a generation that is afraid of everything and prepares for nothing.

Ownership of media was limited BEFORE 1995?6?( give or take ). Before Clinton and GOP pushed a re-write on media ownership, we had some 50-100 companies that owned media (and that was LONG before the explosion with the Internet).IOW, we had competition. Now? Less than 10 companies own American media ( may be 5, I do not recall ).

If we return back to requiring limited ownership (as in how much someone can own), then we would see competition and would see decent media. As it is, we are as bad as China and Russia.

Is there some other strategy that is better? It's hard to see what the "wise" strategy would be for dealing with an aggressive nuclear-armed dictatorship that may or may not be collapsing politically.

Certainly "let Russia do what it wants because they might nuke us otherwise" feels a lot like paying the Dane-geld; as soon as they realized that was our strategy, they'd control us with it.

It is LONG past time for us to be able to SUE companies for this, AND to have criminal investigations against the C*O of companies that are breached. Why? Because they are not doing what is needed to protect this data. It is really not that hard to do.

The purpose would be to bankrupt your opponent; once they no longer have the resources to manufacture more battle-robots, your robots can march to the capital and take it over.

Roll back the Clinton/GOp bill that limited ownership.there is no real competition and all of the majors are as horrible as China daily and RT. Hell, MOST of Aljazerra is better than the trash from America, China, and Russia.

This might be what is needed for the prince to realize that it is better to think long-term for his citizens as opposed to killing short-term critics. IOW, learn from his recent ancestors.

Is John Cage's famous minimalist piece acceptable?

If not, how will they prevent people from playing it?

If so, then it Trump will push this in America if he is elected.

Exactly. If it is outside, it is public. This kind of story is just more BS.