Ya, I was thinking of the downside also- how many decades would this situation (possible large war and and dare I say depression) put back space development. This "situation" was the sort of "thing" I was worried about- why we should have moved quickier, though I was worried mainly about Asia and I thought a market crash would "start" the thing- not two planes crashing into the "market".
So, my first reaction was to ask myself, "How many years is this going to cost?". And my answer was 10 years "optimistically" (I generally like think optimistically) and didn't want to even guess the worst.
It was pretty depressing- maybe I should pick another hobby sort of thing.
I mean what I was orginally "worried about" could still happen, and well, it WAS an optimistic guess.
A few days later I saw a possible silver lining.
My idea of how NASA should begin serious space development is they should go to the Moon, look for water, etc. The problem with this ever happenning is NASA simply being unwilling "to change the way it does business". In other words, it's a political problem within NASA, the actual task of getting it done would be fairly difficult, if you add in the resistance from the status quo, it becomes a heroic task as far as leadership is concerned.
In the current situation the status quo is serious threatened (they probably don't know it yet) which means at some point they are going to look for some "solution" to their troubles.
So, I think the odds currently could be better than before the terrorist attack, of getting to the Moon and getting space development going.