Larry J. linked to an article commenting on how the Air Force is having trouble finding people to do military projects. This supports an earlier post of mine concerning how to revitalize the Space Program:

http://www.habitablezone.com/space/messages/26682.html

Young engineers wisely don't want to go into munitions development because the work is very cyclical and has limited job satisfaction. Imagine coming home after a hard day's work at the CAD box to tell your wife that you just designed a new warhead that had twice the kill radius at only half the manufacturing cost. Truth-to-tell, you couldn't even have the pleasure of bragging to your wife because your work would be classified and she would not have the "need to know".

Choosing between biotech and munitions work is a no-brainer. Of course this has serious national security implications. So what's the cure? The answer is "bait and switch"! If there's a ***Real Mars Program*** out there then young people will flock to the aerospace profession just like they did for the Apollo Program. NASA can skim off the tiny percentage of new workers for the Mars Program while the rest either retrains to a different profession or swallows their ethics and opts to kill terrorists for living. Naturally most of the new graduates will be tired of university so killing towell heads will have an attraction. This was the scenario in the 1970s except it was communists instead of terrorsts that needed killing.

Gary