re: Baxter too
Stephen Baxter's Titan also!
He mentions Columbia's destruction at landing, a Chinese manned space program at the same time, religious fundamentalism and....discovery of life on Titan (well, for that we'll have to wait till next year with Cassini and Huygens).
He also says the US president is inept (but he's a democrat in the story).
The story is extremely pssimistic as an asteroid is deliberatly sent to collide with earth.
And no one on Titan knows what happens on Earth, and vice-versa.
Raoul