In an article appearing on page 1 of the science section of the New York Times December 9, Times reporter Mathew Wald grossly misrepresented the danger posed by cosmic radiation to astronauts on a human Mars mission. The Times report is very misleading, as it compares the Mars mission to Skylab, and then on that basis, claims that to the Mars radiation dose is unprecedented. In reality, astronauts have already spent much longer times aloft than Skylab, and taken doses fully comparable to those of the Mars mission.