...here goes!

(1) I'd love to see NASA singing swan songs [crude metaphor to say the least] for years to come.
But what I hope for and the trends I see are two "different" things.

(2) I'd love to see NASA return to the moon as outlined in Dubya's Moon/Mars space initiative.
But my wishing for it to happen ain't going to change some disturbing and negative trends happening within NASA and its pinkslip-issuing office.
That's the office down the hall from where they ask "What the heck are we going to do now, now that the budget has been reduced again?"

(3) I'd love to see NASA, ESA, RKA, [and whatever the heck China's and
Japan's space agencies are called] getting together in a TERRESTRIAL effort
to visit our "rusty neighbor" that occasionally wanders within 36 million
miles of our NEIGHBORHOOD.

But, politics aside, I don't see it happening, because the Chinese
want to go it alone...and the Western Europeans have a long-term agenda
spelled out that also features humans on Mars.

Did I mention the word NEIGHBORHOOD?....And to think that that would imply the silly little notion that this small spherical ball we live on is called HOME.
You would almost think its residents would be proud to call this small spherical ball their HOME....and cherish that HOME too.

Ooops! I'm drifting off topic again.
Back to those things I wish for...but might not come to pass.

Dubya's "men on Mars" vision is nice, and well meant, but if NASA keeps suffering cuts, cuts....and more cuts from your 'friendly' neighborhood Congressman, eventually, somebody in Congress or in the White House will have the idea of taking what's left of NASA in say the year 2020 and selling it off to the private sector.
Problem is? By that time, any private company will have to "reinvent the wheel" so-to-speak to restore that privatized space agency to its former
grandeur of say 1969, if that would be possible 15 years from now.

BTW!
The US Government used to have an Agency, employing thousands
of Americans, and operating for decades. Do you know what that agency was [the key word is 'was']? I'll give you a clue: Panama Canal.
That should give you something to think about and search for tonight, alcaray!

Adios, amigo.