Posted by jburk to General News at March 6, 2004 04:22 PM

NASA's celebration last week of gritty evidence that Mars once had enough water to support life has spawned more questions: Where's the water now? When did it disappear? Are there any fossils of living creatures, or even microbes? But prominent scientists outside the space agency are beginning to ask a harder question: Does Mars represent what is out of whack in American science and exploration?