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Maybe I'm not clear on what "this" is. Is it the original tweet? NASA itself? Orion? SLS? I'm not arguing that NASA exists solely for the benefit of mankind (does anything?). I would argue that most of the people working on Orion, SLS, and "going to Mars" in general, are doing it primarily because they want to put people on Mars. The fact that it has substantial military/surveillance use cases is incidental to the people actually doing the science and engineering. I guess it comes down to perspective. From a political perspective, you're probably right. But from a NASA perspective, from the top on down it absolutely is about going to Mars.