While looking for info on a great article in the March issue of Scientific American, I stumbled upon this instead, an interesting blog editorial about NASA's FY07 budget.

"So in trekking through Washington's lunar-cold budgetary landscape, NASA obviously had to make some hard decisions. We will go on with manned missions, our goal to return to the moon and then on to Mars. This is good, very good. But first there is that little hurtle: we have got finish up the shuttle program, which, apart from fixing Hubble, serves no greater purpose except to service and complete the ISS as it circles above, on its way to where it was 90 minutes ago, waiting to be completed so it can be decommissioned."

The March article, for what it's worth, was a pretty devastating overview by Eugene N. Parker about the prospects for shielding manned missions against cosmic rays. The chances don't look good.

At the moment, I'm preferring to live in the future I'm slowly constructing in my notes, rather than the one that's unfolding in front of us.