I’ve been at meetings at NASA HQ all day (sorry, nothing particularly exciting) and I’m about to fly back to Florida for about ten hours, after which I fly to California for the afternoon, then to St. Louis for a weekend family wedding, leaving on Friday morning. Blogging is unlikely for a while…

I will leave you with this irritating vignette from the White House Press Corps, offered by Jeff Foust:

Q And how is the Mars program going?

MR. McCLELLAN: NASA can probably update you on the effort. Again, this is a long-term program, and you can sit there and smirk about it, but the President felt it was important — (laughter) — the President felt it was important to outline a clearly defined mission for NASA. And we’re all excited about today’s launch and we wish the —

Q Will he be speaking about it —

MR. McCLELLAN: Hang on — we wish the crew all the best.

Q Will he be speaking about it —

MR. McCLELLAN: NASA is working on implementing it, John. Thanks for starting out the briefing on such — (laughter.)

Wasn’t that a knee slapper?

That dumb Bush and his fantasy mission to Mars. Yuk, yuk…

McClellan didn’t handle this well. The response to the first question should have been: “To which Mars program are you referring?” (Thus offering the reporter an opportunity to be more expansive on his profound ignorance about national space policy).

After he did so, saying something like, “You know, the president’s plan to send people to Mars decades from now,” the response would be: “Well, John, how much progress would you expect this year on something that’s not going to happen for decades? Do you imagine that that’s the sum total of American space policy? Or haven’t you been paying attention? Are you opposed to the nation having a long-term vision for space exploration?”

Yeah, I know that his job is to answer questions, not ask them, but still.

What’s really annoying about this is that on one of the few times the daily White House briefing leads off with space policy questions (due obviously to yesterday’s successful launch) there can’t be an intelligent discussion about it.