| Seems a bit silly to try and project the budget for that many years...
The United States Congress may often seem like an incompetent, corrupt, indecisive national disgrace...but by God they can deftly spend tons of money to wave the flag and defend our national pride!
I have a feeling that a Chinese moon landing or Mars program would result in NASA's budget suddenly getting healthy, substantive domestic issues be damned. They'd have the public's attention at the very least.
Anyway, shouldn't we be showering the solar system with robots instead of trying to do manned flight on a shoestring budget?
I know that not every robot is going to defy expectations like the Mars rovers but we could land robots on a hell of a lot more places that we can even think about sending people. | 