Except maybe pretty girls in nothing riding bicycles. =P

Only a slashdotter would finish that sentence with the word bicycles.

Hopefully people will realize how important the space program is, but something tells me that it won't be soon, and it won't be until we get something inspiring. Deep space voyages, while important, won't inspire anyone. Landing on the Moon or Mars? That will.

The biggest impediment to that PR vision is keeping the spam in the can alive to both land on the surface of Mars, in particular, and return to earth. Looking over the historical evidence, http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/log/, it does not give a sense that we have a good handle on how to manage risk associated with unmanned science missions to Mars, let alone a manned missions which will require much more complexity. About half of all missions to Mars that have been attempted have failed. Killing people en route or crashing people on the surface of Mars does absolutely no good, and will likely yield the opposite of the desired PR outcome. I, for one, would like to see much better accounting for, and management of, the risk associated with both current unmanned Mars missions before attempting a simple PR stunt involving people. Science for the sake of science has it's place, and one is risk mitigation. And since everyone knows the moon is made of cheese http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/films/granddayout/, so there is no need to go back there :)