"It works fine."That depends on where it is you want to go. For joy rides into near earth orbit (i.e. the space shuttle) it sorta works .... except for a few spectacular failures. For anything beyond the moon, it's pretty much a one way trip. It takes months to get there and it's very difficult to bring along enough fuel to make your way back. For any serious manned exploration, the first thing that *must* be replaced is the propulsion system. This means putting money into scientific research ... *not* more manned joyrides just for the sake of the publicity.If we ever do get off this rock, the Large Hadron Collider (and similar projects) will have as much if not more to do with it than anything at NASA.