Making the rounds: NASA has officially "previewed" its plans for upcoming lunar and martian missions. Regular readers will find nothing suprising, but it does make for a nice confirmation/summary of what NASA wants to do. Unfortunately, since Katrina there's a lot more "if the money's there" talk. NASA watchers will understand this tends to be codespeak for "has become a pipe dream. Again."

Still, they are retiring the shuttle, so it's not as if they can just pretend alternatives never happened. But when it comes right down to it, alls I can say is "Go Rutan! Go!"