Your article was well written. However the theme "No Bucks Without ET" causes me intense irritation.

I'm sympathetic with the following:

"But the very large number of planetary scientists who deal with worlds and phenomena that are virtually certain to be lifeless -- or have only a weak connection (or none) to the question of alien life forms -- naturally feel that their areas of interest will be slighted in a space exploration scheme centered around alien life, and take a bitter attitude toward the idea of making planetary exploration revolve primarily around it."

I personally think exobiology is scientific rubbish. I think NASA has made a Faustian bargain in selling planetary exploration as merely an exercise in exobiology. I am fairly confident that Mars will be found to be dry and lifeless. I also suspect that Mars has never had life on it. Once John Q. Sixpack realizes that the whole multibillion dollar / multi-decade search-for-life exercise on Mars has come up empty then he will take a very dim view upon similar exercises being directed towards other worlds. What now makes funding so easy for planetary exploration (exobiology) could within a decade be its greatest liability.

NASA must broaden its political base concerning planetary exploration. This should not be hard to do. For example, the most important celestial body in the Solar System is obviously the Earth. The second most important celestial body is the Sun. We are already doing a fair bit of solar research but let's face it, it's hard to get close-and-personal with a star. Jupiter is really not a planet but actually a small unignited star. NASA has almost completed an extremely successful program of exploring Jupiter through Galileo. There should be follow on programs directed at the further exploration of Jupiter (biology probes to Europa don't count). We need to send many atmospheric probes to Jupiter to get a better understanding about that world's atmosphere. We also need to look at the gas giants beyond Jupiter for similar reasons.

Gary