What's worse than having a mission you can't accomplish? No mission at all. What's worse than no mission at all? A changing mission every 4 or 8 years as a new administration takes office.<p>I'm finding it really hard not to say something political -- pretty angry right now. I'll simply note that for whatever reasons manned spaceflight at NASA has lost its luster with large hunks of the American public. And like every other political spending program, if there is not a large group of people pushing for it, it's going to get cut.