ROBOTS to the moon by 2008. Human moon-base builders by 2020. And what then? Doh! Mars of course. Before George Bush had even opened his lips last week we already knew what his vision would be and what the American public thought of it. An Associated Press poll, published two days previously, revealed that 55 per cent of Americans would prefer any spare cash to be spent on Earth, on things such as leaking school roofs, rather than on building homes in space.
Inevitably, the slow drip of information leaked in advance of the speech, no doubt designed to sample…
