And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command...

I've been re-reading Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier, so you know the voices in my head that most hate NASA have been dominating the internal dialogues lately, right?

And then this morning I read Carl's post right here, about how the National Space Flight Prevention Administration has cut funding for Mars exploration, which actually comes as a surprise, since what else have they got going on that they can put in the news to impress the twelve or fourteen people in America still susceptible to being impressed by NASA? These are the people who, after forty years of intensive post-Apollo research and development, are no longer capable of low earth orbit.

And I suddenly imagined a series of monuments I'm going to commission, after I've betrayed the revolution and set myself up as President-for-Life.

First I'm going to have every building in Cape Kennedy and the appropriate regions of Houston and Huntsville bulldozed and hauled off. Every brick. Then workmen will lay down vast expanses of desert sand. Then the sculptures: I'm picturing two vast and trunkless legs of stone, right? Near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is NASA, Hope of Generations: Look on my works, ye taxpayers, and Don't get fooled again!'