<font color="yellow">Where the money goes is not so important as the logic behind how money and resources are used. <br /></font><br /><br />I agree!<br /><br />I am all for more money being spent on space exploration. 2x or 3x more! In my vision, I would like to see many more unmanned probes and rovers, plus an improved communication net here and at key planets so that we can receive the huge bandwidth of transmission from probes and rovers.<br /><br />We should be sending a new generation of unmanned probes to map Titan, and back to Jupiter and Uranus and Neptune.<br /><br />We should be building a fleet of many cheap "standardized" rovers to explore Mars, the Moon, some asteroids, a comet, and some Jovian and Saturnian moons.<br /><br />We should also build several expensive customized rovers for detailed analysis of key planetary locations, such as Mars, Titan, Europa, Io, Enceladus, etc.<br /><br />In my vision, we should have a dozen rovers running at any given moment!<br /><br />We should <i>fully</i> repair the Hubble and keep it running.<br /><br />We should fund research into making tinier, smaller robotic probes with enhanced capability. This can be done using existing and forseen improvements in nano technologies and data processing.<br /><br />Data should be published and publicly available on the web, with minimal delay. NASA and JPL are largely doing this now, which I applaud. Research papers from publicly funded projects should be published in journals which have <i>free</i> internet access, and not in paid-access journals. If said journals need government subsidy to meet publishing expenses, then include this very minor funding. This should be the universal standard. Afterall, we the taxpayers pay for this research. (and yes, I understand the counterarguments, but I feel these counterarguments are not compelling enough, and also obsolete thinking).<br /><br />I think it is an unwise use of money to send people to Mars and the moon <i>at this time</i> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>