My thinking for the last 7 years has been that CAPS might be the only manned mission which the public might support...

You could very well be right. In an age of apparetly endless $200 billion disasters, "Apollo on Steroids" may not be compelling enough to hold a place in the American taxpayer's heart...especially with support being fairly tepid from the get-go.

But with the last few years being witness to both the tsunami and the wreck of a major US city by a hurricane and its after-effects...well, I think Americans could appreciate a NASA whose mission is planetary defense...to protect earth from the ravages of an unpredictable and uncaring universe.