> But these are things we can't realistically do with rovers anytime in the foreseeable future.
If you read the article, you'll see that these are things that we can't realistically do with humans anytime in the foreseeable future.
What do you find the most compelling? IMO most of the article was well researched but leaned heavily in appropriate analogs, and it was also rather misleading in a number of areas, probably in an effort to support a conclusion that the evidence that did not actually support. For instance the author just completely hand-waves away the fact that most time on a Mars mission will be spent not in 0-g, but in Mars' 0.3g.
I do not, in general, find the article compelling in the least, but it spawned some interesting discussion!