You don’t have to be a fan of that unmentionable science fiction series to think that NASA would be making a mistake if it pulled the plug on the V’ger — sorry, Voyager — program. One of the two Voyager probes is approaching the edge of what can be thought of as the sun’s atmosphere (where the solar wind bumps up against interstellar wind), a place where no probe has gone before, and the annual cost to keep receiving the signal is about $4 million. We’ve already spent hundreds of millions on the project, and the spacecraft are going to run out of power anyway in about 15 years, so the marginal cost for the extra, invaluable, data would be minimal. Oh, and the White House is requesting $121 million for the National Endowment for the Arts for FY 2006.