It is no accident that, whatever their human flaws, and how ever moribund the human space program has become (a trend that the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission may have helped to reverse), astronauts and cosmonauts are still widely regarded as heroes of our species. A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days.