Buck? Lay aside your damn nationalism/patriotism for just a minute,
and realize that I "wish" NASA would remain NUMBER ONE in space exploration, for at least another decade!!!
But that's the problem!
Wishin' ain't gonna do s**t!

NASA is suffering a serious decline, budgetary and otherwise!
It's gonna get worse in 10, 20 50 years, assuming NASA will survive 10 more years.
And that's another wish, hope or assumption!

Is NASA's budget going to increase over the next ten years?....See what happens
when your Congress starts to put the scalpel to Dubya's Moon/Mars initiative, you'll be lucky
to see the skeletal remains of the Moon/Mars initiative budget.

And what the hell happens when Dubya leaves in 4 years?...You think either Condi
or Hillary give a damn about the Moon/Mars initiative?
You gotta to look 4, 10 20 years down the road! It ain't pretty!

Gary has explained how NASA is cutting its own throat by laying off more - and - more 0- and - more of its engineers and scientists, or allowing them to leave because they get frustrated, etc.
You can't run a space agency by letting your best people drift away over the years,
eventually it's going to bite you in the ass.

You say that NASA's budget is larger than ESA's - now? So what?
In 10 to 20 years the reverse is going to be true - just look at the f***in' trends over the past 20 years in their respective budgets! Huh?

Trends, Buck! Trends! The year 2004, with the rovers and Cassini, I repeat and I confess was good for JPL and NASA, BUT - BUT - BUT - unless your Congress starts to seriously boot up NASA's budget, instead of cutting here and there as it has done for 30 years, and keep booting it up to make the Moon/Mars initiative a sure thing - otherwise, watch NASA continue to gradually wither away with ever fewer successes in the future.

Who the hell is going to do anything about your Congress, the great budget-cutting machine, as I call it? Are you going to do something about it, or simply remain on the sidelines? Huh, Buck?