Dear Editors,

The title of the article, "Ticket to Mars will cost the Earth" in today's Sunday Observer should be given more  literal consideration than the author intended.

Attempting to put men on the Red Planet in the foreseeable future will be yet another expression of man's "more animal than human" nature, of his arrogance and stupidity, a further act of denial and distraction from the dire situation we have managed to "develop" and "progress" ourselves into here on Earth.

Like the blind addicts we are, we are pressing ahead with plundering our planet, not just continuing, but ever increasing the non-sustainable drain and strain we are placing on its limited resources and carrying capacity, in compulsive pursuit of an insane (because utterly unsustainable), growth-dependent economy and the equally insane materialistic lifestyles it engenders.