Fred J. McCall wrote:

:Nonsense. Many many things have become affordable because
f advances not specifically directed at those things.

If you think it's nonsense, please tell us just what technologies you
think are sufficiently 'dual use' to Mars flights and something else
(and what that something else is) so as to drive down the costs of
Mars flights.

Launch, electronics, manufacturing, propulsion, electrical energy
production, and so on and so on.

The technologies involved in a Mars mission would have to be completely
disconnected from the rest of the technosphere for Mars missions
not to be helped by advances elsewhere.

Paul