To be honest if NASA can pull off a manned mission to Mars then one of my childhood dreams will be fulfilled and I hope I will live to see it. My initial reaction to this ambitious plan however was similar to Dan Drezner’s. That fiscal restraint has gone out of the window a long time ago we all knew, but to throw a mission to Mars and the Moon into the mix is taking the spending spree to unprecedented levels. It could be a political move with the upcoming campaign in mind, but the Bush team has inadvertently given some great material to the Democrats: “first he spends a fortune to go to Iraq and now he wants your money to go to Mars?” And that is a mild one, I can think of nastier stuff. The point is that with a recovering economy and consolidation of affairs in Iraq it might work and be a great sell but the Bush team has taken a bit of a gamble here. Grandiose projects like this are left better to a second term when a President can built his legacy uninterrupted by electoral concerns, now it could come back to haunt him in a number of unpleasant ways.