NASA Says Nobody’s Getting to Mars Without Its Help

… NASA administrator Charles Bolden went so far as to say that “No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars.”

This can be taken two ways:

1) “NASA is just plain essential and nobody else has the smarts to do it.”

2) “Just you try, and we’ll drop on you like a ton of Federal bricks.”

Let’s *hope* that the true meaning is the arrogance inherent in #1. #2 would indicate serious trouble.