While the salt levels pose some inconvenience, I suspect that they also helped Mars to retain much of the water it has been able to hold.

I am interested in finding out more about which salts there are, and the proportions. It would also be nice to hear more about the speculations and debates about the data in real time.

I am not suggesting that those involved go off half-cocked, drawing conclusions before they are fully warranted. But NASA has been on the wrong persuasion road for a long time, and I see few signs that they realize it.

To get the political support and funding is not just a matter of convincing our representatives. You won’t budge them an inch if their constituency is not on board.

But decades of taxation without prospects of an extremely visible return, particularly with the intractable terrestrial problems we are facing now, competing for sharply reduced revenues, cannot continue to be the sole source of funding.

Venture capital, the private sector, needs to play a much larger role. And NASA
needs to welcome the participation of private enterprise instead of thinking of it as competition.

From this article it’s not clear. How is it determined that the water of the past was so salty? Could this one area have been a Dead Sea?