I SHOULD BE IN BED, but how can I go to sleep without posting on this news?

The Bush administration has signed off on the ambitious nuclear-rocket project — though not specifically for the Mars landing — and the president may officially launch the initiative during his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said in an interview with The Times. The project, dubbed Project Prometheus, would greatly expand the nuclear propulsion plans that NASA quietly announced last year when it said it may spend $1 billion over the next five years to design a nuclear rocket. NASA and the Bush administration are keeping the lid on the details, including how much more the agency expects to request from Congress, but O’Keefe said the funding increase will be “very significant.”

I suppose it won’t be anything like this. Unless, of course, there’s already somebody worried about this.