There is a lot of evidence that unmanned probes, especially ones that, like rovers and orbiters, can deliver new and interesting things with passing time, do a pretty good job of catching the layman's attention.

Kudos to the MER website for the best job of packaging and delivering new data that I've ever seen in a space project. Cassini is close behind.

I think a series of lunar rovers is LONG overdue. Approaching (but NOT entering) Apollo landing sites, and taking long-range photos, would be a big draw.

Other unmanned missions that might be interesting to the layman:

- A lander on an asteroid that delivers ground photos.

- A Titan lander with a nuclear power supply. And it did not entirely escape my notice that if they could soft-land Huygens, they could land a rover. Temperature would be an issue. Again, nuclear power required.

- Mercury rover. Temperature problem might not be able to be overcome. Much easier to generate more heat than lose it.

- Europa rover. Don't have to wait to be able to drill through that ice--sure as heck if there are large bodies of liquid deep below the surface, they will have spit out through cracks everywhere. Deep frozen samples on the surface. Rover instead of lander, so you can find one of these frozen geyser fields. Might have to dig deep enough into the ice to avoid radiation effects on the samples.

Hey, I'm seeing a generic "ice moon" rover as being a very good idea.

- Anybody else think an MRO-style high-res orbiter in lunar orbit would be really a good idea? What would its resolution be at a much lower orbit than at Mars?

Needless to say, none of the above implies that I do not prefer manned missions.