If the french say

this is preety off topic, but it atleast involves frenchies

type in "french military victories" on google and then hit "i'm feeling lucky"

And also the vacuum dried astronaut [poo] orbiting the earth!

on a more serious note, I would invest in fusion rather then space. But hey, lets see what he does before judging. He is a far better president as he was a minister.

And this relates to space, how?:P

France is now for 6 months head of the European council. the french president is a show man who needs publicity for his ego. so he decided to be his 6 months to be the best europe has seen for decades. that crushed with the irish NO! to the treaty of Lissabon and the refusal of the same treaty by several heads of state in europe in the days after. so his big show has a big scratch and what to do now? as all polticans do: cover a story with a greater story and what is greater than a european space mission to the moon?! this is only one idea of many others Sarkozy has recently proclaimed he wants to do in merely 6 months. without the grounding of the treaty of Lissabon he will fail, but he is a politican and gets his drama for the media.

I'm all for it, I'm still waiting for the first asteroids to be mined! Let's forget about this traveling to Mars nonsense for a moment and start sucking dry them floating 'gold' mines.

Unless they had gold coated cornflakes for breakfast, no.

Would now be a bad time to point out that the real EU's interest in "space" is strictly limited to providing an affordable satellite launch system for those that cannot afford NASA's $14bn charges, or Russia's $13.9bn charges?

The real EU (I.e not those inferiority-complex-riddled French) has no plans, at least in the near future, for manned missions to anywhere; there's no point.

We'll need more powerful engines though.