>Will the Moon folks finally admit the obvious direction of public interest?

What unmitigated garbage.

The only logical way of looking at the survey results (if it has any scientific validity, which i doubt) is to treat it as a recommnedation for expenditure: ie, for every 91 expenditure units on Mars; there should be 65 on the Moon, 62 on Europa; 37 on New Horizons (effectively); etc. If NASA were to follow this survey's recommendation, there would be a major increase in Moon expenditure (from zero to at least US$200m per year; which is about two thirds of the Mars budget), making a solid sequence of next generation orbiters & multiple sample returns possible; & both a Europa orbiter >&< New Horizons would easily be feasible for launch within this decade. Other targets are equally interesting: an Io advanced flyby would go in this decade on this expenditure; as would at least one comet nucleaus sample return; & while some missions - the Titan orbiter for eg - would take about 20 years to fund on this low levels of interest - Venus orbiters &/or atmospheric probes could be funded on a regular basis at around than $US75m & even the smaller funds (about US$50m) allocated for asteroid research would easily fund a sample return mission every 3-4 years.

Now >this< would be a program NASA could be proud of; rather than the idiotic apology for a Mars cargo cult we seem always to be threatened with....

Robert