To an extent, this research is being done because (1) It's fairly cheap, compared to real R&D and (2) There's nothing else to do in the meantime. Without big

To an extent, this research is being done because (1) It's fairly cheap, compared to real R&D and (2) There's nothing else to do in the meantime. Without big budget shifts, or big tech breakthroughs, there's no realistic path to a (NASA) manned Mars mission anytime soon. So there's fiddling around the edges of the problem in the interim.