Hi Joe, CYA is "Cover your ..." You said you were a deck-hand once. I'm sure you've filled in the rest of it by now. I largely agree with the rest of what you've said. I think where NASA has excelled has been the "one-off" projects where a lot of new technology has been tried. This would include many of the planetary missions. I think much of what was learned in materials development, programming, robotics, orbital mechanics has then been useful input to commercial enterprise (well, maybe not the orbital mechanics). They've also taught us many exciting things we didn't know or suspect. The over-and-over stuff like the shuttle and ISS are where the beaurocratic tendencies blow up and the payoff is low--except to contractors. I'd love to take that trip to Mars. Think of the frequent flyer miles you'd rack up. But once you begin to evaluate the risks and unknowns, I think you see that we're looking at robots for quite some time. I know I'm veering off-topic a little here. One of the things that Bob Zubrin and his nutty followers miss is the fact of muscular atrophy after a few months in zero-G. I read Jerry Linengar's book about being on Mir, written about a year after he got back. At that point, he was STILL experiencing loss of strength and muscle mass. Good thing Mars is populated by physical therapists that will help the astronauts get back in shape when they get there. Luckily my skepticism about things said by our current administration kept me from actually believing we'd try to send people to Mars. I don't think it was put forward with any seriousness and like most purely political statements it will go away all by itself. My most generous interpretation is that is was an attempt to put the kabosh on a number of more hopeless NASA projects. ------------------------------------------- OK, Sorry for my ignorance, but what's CYA mode? Also, while we are listing disastrous programs, let's not forget Alliant TechSystems and Dugway Proving Ground were heavily involved with the X-33 fiasco......