And this examples of the potential negative side effects of the new manned space initiative:

"The work of the dark energy hunters has been complicated by the impending loss of the Hubble Space Telescope, which can see far enough out in space and time to measure how and if the dark energy parameter w is changing over the eons.

Last month, citing safety, NASA canceled all future shuttle maintenance missions to the telescope, dooming it to die in orbit, probably within three years, according to astronomers. "The Hubble shutdown will slow us all down," Dr. Perlmutter said.

At the same time, as a result of the agency's presidentially ordered shift toward the Moon and Mars, plans for a special satellite that was to have been jointly sponsored by NASA and the Department of Energy have at least temporarily disappeared from NASA's five-year budget plan."