Every leader, from the Romans on down to today's knows or knew the value of keeping the "governed" entertained. This "new" space initiative, IMHO, is nothing more that an attempt to get our minds off of the falacy of Iraq and its missing WMDs and the equally missing Osama. More worrisome to me is the parallel to what happened to the Russians when they tried to keep up with Ronald Regan as he spent more and more or, at least pretended to spend more and more, on defense. Like it or not, America is broke. We are out of money to spend on stuff like this and China, for one, knows it. As their economy becomes stronger, mostly due to the imbalance of trade, they have announced an aggressive space exploration program and Bush has risen to the bait. As it stands right now, we have saddled our children and grandkids with the unbelievable debt of our social security system and now we are going to bury them with the needless expense of manned space exploration. My .02 Barney Bettilyon