When the Dubya announced his "vision" of having NASA go back to the Moon (with people) and then on to Mars (people again), NASA had to quickly change to keep pace. A new plan was drafted, one in which glittering achievements like picking up a rock decades hence would win out over making actual scientific discoveries. The American Physical Society commissioned a study on how this would impact science and NASA's basic functioning. No great surprise, this plan is a disaster. News coverage of the APS study. The critics of the study are fairly predictable, the people-in-space lobby. Don't get me wrong, it'll be great to send folks to the Moon, I have some people in mind, but on fixed (small) budgets it's crazy. Robots, scientific spacecrafts, and remote exploration are the way to do the science until the money is available to send people.
Digression here: the problem of "what is worth funding" is a vexing one. Is my scientific research (think one $100M project, and a couple of $20M projects over a few years) more important than educating children in Minneapolis? Nope. Or treating folks in Zambia suffering from malaria? Again, no way. More important that the $Billions spent killing Iraqi kids? I'd have to say yes. On the other hand, there is no way that the monies that went into these science programs would ever be spent for "humanitarian purposes" or the military money spent on science. Funding entities do not work that way. The local school district can easily spend $250k on consultants to "map the future of their IT developments" at a time when $1000 isn't available to buy art supplies. (Or heck, the "media center" (formerly known as a library) can update its computers every three years while not buying books. (And use much of the library space for those computers.))
Ending rant now...
Bush: "And after Mars, we'll land on the Sun!"
Reporter: "Won't it be a bit too hot?"
Bush: "We'll land at night!"