12 years to the moon, Alice

This kills me every time I read it.

Despite funding uncertainty, NASA is on track to return humans to the moon by 2020 and set up a lunar outpost to serve as a springboard to explore Mars, officials said Monday.

"Our job is to build towns on the moon and eventually put tire prints on Mars," NASA's Rick Gilbrech told reporters here, one year after the US space agency unveiled an ambitious plan to site a solar-powered, manned outpost on the south pole of the moon.

Ambitious? We got to the moon less than 10 years after making it our goal with, relatively speaking, primitive 1960's technology. Now it is going to take 12 years with much advanced technology. I'll put my money on the line by saying that we won't even be back to the moon by 2020 unless someone else beats us there and embarrasses us by doing so.