I HAVE TO SAY, the Pluto mission is pretty cool:
The scheduled launch of the New Horizons spacecraft Tuesday afternoon, and a successful, nine-year journey to Pluto, would complete an exploration of the planets started by NASA in the early 1960s with unmanned missions to observe Mars, Mercury and Venus.
“What we know about Pluto today could fit on the back of a postage stamp,” said Colleen Hartman, a deputy associate administrator at NASA. “The textbooks will be rewritten after this mission is completed.”
Now we need to start resume moving humanity out beyond Earth orbit.