but I suspect the emphasis from now on will be on flashy manned missions, not science recons with robots. The former are big PR spectacles, with patriotic chest-beating and national prestige consequences, and I'm afraid that is what mostly appeals to the current political fashion.

I love manned missions, and believe they are important, but in a time of constrained budgets you get a lot more for your buck with automated probes and pure science. Besides, you greatly increase the possibility of stumbling onto something so wonderful that a manned mission becomes worthwhile. You can thoroughly explore the solar system for the cost of one new Apollo. Some science missions, like the Mars rovers and Hubble, have been big popular successes but as a rule, the propaganda value is in the manned missions.

There is one other issue, as well, that is rarely brought up but should be factored in to our calculations. The failure of a manned mission, particularly one where lives are lost, can cost the space program a great deal in public support, perhaps even provoke its cancellation. The risks of space exploration are worth it, and they are inevitable, but they should only be taken when the payoff is undeniable and substantial.

In today's political climate, its propaganda, not science, that really matters. Right now, the biggest science payoffs are in the outer solar system, while the easiest manned target is the moon. Mars is right in between. Manned missions to the outer satellites are currently out of the question at our level of technology, and even Mars is, at best, marginal. And why go back to the moon? I can't think of one good reason.

In my opinion, we should continue our robotic exploration of the outer solar system and its comets and the asteroid belt and continue our expansion of the space telescope and earth resources programs. Since we have already made a huge investment in the space station, I think we should follow up on that effort, it allows us to continue developing manned space tech. But our early fantasies about industrial facilities in earth orbit never really worked out. Where are all those zero-g cancer cures and hyper-spherical ball bearings we were supposed to get out of space station labs?

We should cut back on lunar, Mars or asteroid manned missions unless our robots turn up something that simply demands human exploration.