When I woke up this morning and was told the news, the first thing I thought was, "They're going to try to kill the space program." Politicians with their agendas. The first thing I thought of.

They'll rally around the failures of NASA, the few gains we've gotten from the space program in the last decade, today's dead. They'll try to shut it down. "Money should be spent on more important things," they'll say, "not joyrides to the upper atmosphere with Ms. O'Malley's third-grade class's ant farm."

I couldn't agree more with that. We should be doing more with the money -- taking flight to Mars, establishing a foothold on that planet. A permanent base on Mars. Instead, we've got a government-run space agency that can't do anything innovative. A space agency that is operating off of years-old mandates and spending plans. An agency that doesn't look beyond the Space Shuttle Fleet because every part on a shuttle is made in a different state and that makes Senators happy.

We had five shuttles -- five shells really. Five shells and three engines. Then we lost one. Now we're down to three shells and one working engine. For well over two decades, we've been sending the same parts up with ant farms, politicians, old people -- doing more public relations than science.

Now we've got a chance to actually slap NASA around and mothball the shuttle fleet. This is the perfect time to shift focus to Mars Direct. The astronauts wanted only one thing: to go into space. They wanted it so much, they realized that they could've died doing so.

I hope they don't kill the space program over this. I really don't.

-FP