So George Bush has committed the US to putting boots on Mars. It would be churlish, if understandable, to suggest a subliminal desire on the US president's part to be associated with the God of War.
And, unkind though tempting, to imply a sympathy with the aspirations expressed in his testament by Cecil Rhodes: the imperialist's imperialist complained that "the world is nearly all parcelled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and colonised. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far away." ...
Others have also suggested, most unfairly, that Mr Bush's motives are purely electoral, that there are other neglected projects in need of cash, or complained about his stingy and unrealistic insistence that NASA must do the job by diverting allocated resources. The plan is to build a new shuttle and base on the moon and to use that for an eventual push for Mars, perhaps by 2030. NASA has been told to transfer $11 billion of its budget to the project and will get another $1 billion over the next five years. Yet Mr Bush's own father was told 10 years ago that to put a man on Mars would cost at least $400 billion.
To be sure, begrudgers and bean counters complained at the time that Queen Isabella could better have spent her hard-plundered wealth on worthy projects closer to home - like her own invention, the Inquisition - than on Columbus's dreams of a new Indies route.
Small minds. For once George Bush has connected with a visceral, unquenchable urge in the human spirit, that element that drove Columbus and St Brendan to the New World, that conquered Everest simply because it was there, and that inspired scientists through the ages to say that no problem was or is beyond them. He has set a challenge worthy of mankind in the 21st Century - others will find the means and make the trip. For once he should be applauded.
It is this spirit which in 1902 animated H.G. Wells, writing in his The Discovery of the Future: "It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening ... A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars."