I figured you'd be psyched about that. I think it's really cool - apparently a textbook landing. Never any word from poor Beagle 2, unfortunately. But hopefully this one will pan out, and with another one scheduled to land in a few months, things could get really interesting, really fast.
I'm a huge fan of robotic exploration, it's cheaper, more efficient and makes more sense than sending humans places. Especially now that robotic probes have become so much more sophisticated - can your average human perform a spectral analysis on a geological sample by himself? I'm sure you've seen The Right Stuff - sending humans in space was purely a PR move, and now it seems like NASA has finally realized this.
My big ideas on space exploration are these - first, I think we should send orbiters to each planet with large solar arrays (I guess they'd have to be nuclear for ones out past, say Jupiter, since there isn't enough sunlight) and their sole function would be to act as locator beacons for any other probes that we might want to send. I think it would significantly reduce any error in getting both manned and unmanned spacecraft to their destination.
Second - I think there should be an international space agency that gets money from any country who wants to participate. It would reduce redundancy of missions and would allow us to take on more ambitious goals - let's face it, saying "this part of the moon belongs to the US" is pretty ridiculous.
Happy N.Y.!
edited to add Thanks!
[Edited on Jan 05, 2004 12:54PM]