Gary wrote:
People at NASA have been wanting to send a spacecraft up close to the sun for years but they can't get it funded (not sexy enough).

Alex writes:
While it's certainly true that the ambitious Solar Probe portion of the now-defunct Outer Planets/Solar Probe Project

See http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire//sprobe.htm

appears to be dead

See http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=2316

one will note that NASA recently awarded a $600 million contract to JHU/APL to develop solar missions as part of NASA's Sun-Earth Connection, Living With a Star (LWS) and Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) programs.

NASA TAPS HOPKINS' APPLIED PHYSICS LAB TO DEVELOP SOLAR
MISSIONS
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2001/01-128.txt

Also on the drawing boards is an ESA mission called Solar Orbiter:

See
http://solarsystem.estec.esa.nl/projects/solar_orbiter.htm

http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=45&cid=3086&oid=27581

http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=45&cid=3086&oid=25920

Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii