This month, the White House ordered a sweeping independent review of Nasa's manned spaceflight strategy.

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It was designed to build spacecraft for a return manned spaceflight to the moon by 2020.

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ALH84001 hit the headlines, the space-science programme's funding seemed vulnerable to the insatiable demands of manned spaceflight.

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But proponents of manned spaceflight continue to claim that manned spaceflight is the best way to do science.

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Other contained information related to the Orion and Constellation manned spaceflight programs.

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And Mars really is the only destination that can prevent the kind of funding the manned spaceflight program will require from becoming fatally controversial in the current fiscal environment.

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