Where do you get your money from? You don't seriously think that Joe Public really gives a darn about your pet project of trying to see how big the Universe is, what Dark Matter is and where did you put it or any of that other junk, do you?

I was once in a National Park on a cave tour and the guide just went on and on about how having tours in her cave was killing it and that we should just stop letting the public in and let only the serious researchers in. After about 30 minutes of this I asked her what she thought she'd have if they didn't offer tours in this cave at 50 bucks a family. After thirty seconds I told her she'd have a hole in the ground that NOBODY would be interested in paying her to explore, now get on with the tour.

Do we need to capture the public imagination? Need I remind you what happened to the moon shots after we lost the publics attention? If you can show the folks that there is a wonderous place out there and get them to come along I'm all for it. We've tried for the last 10-20 years to convince them that they're going to die from an asteroid impact and most of them just giggle and ask if it'll be using hair gel or shoe bombs.