What I thought of, at the time, as a humorous response to a Slashdot blurb about the Bush administration cancelling a proposed Pluto Mission. It kind of went off track into the cost of a manned mission to Mars (which we’re still not doing) in relation to the cost of the Star Wars-like (the program not the movie) National Missile Defense System (which we are):

– Cost of manned mission to Mars as estimated by NASA: $ 20 billion.
– Estimated cost of national missile defense system: $ 60 billion.
– President Bush accidently shooting down the Shuttle while playing aboard a US Nuclear Submarine: Priceless.

As an aside, having previously worked at Lockheed and seen the results of our NMD tests, I wouldn’t hold your breath. We went something like 0 for 9 before actually hitting a target drone, and that one was flying straight and slow exactly where we put it, and wasn’t even using any of the anti-NMD devices known to be used.