Normal, I should say. Brazil has a relatively modest space program. It does not include manned flights or anything like that. We are a very junior partner in the space station, but it seems to be sufficient for our people to have the opportunity to fly experiments under microgravity. It's not felt by anyone around here that there is something out of order given the size of our space program.

Our space program has always been very much devoted to space applications. It does have a science component, but it's not a purely science-driven program. But it's not a purely technologically-driven program [either].

If you look at what Brazil has done in space over the years, it has always been using a program devoted to using space to do things for Brazil that are either better done or can only be done using space.

Probably a very easy-to-understand example is the monitoring of deforestation in the Amazon. If you really think about it, it's not that it would be more difficult or more expensive to do with ground-based techniques: it's absolutely impossible to do without the use of satellites. The region is so large.

One interesting way to look at it is that the benefits of using space to do something tends to be proportional to the area that is covered, and Brazil has a very large surface area. It is larger than the continental U.S. And it's very sparsely populated.

It would be prohibitively expensive to have high-quality telecommunication in a very large portion of Brazil without satellites.

The monitoring of river levels in Brazil is mostly done using our satellites, nowadays.

Meteorology -- Brazil has a very strong agricultural sector. That is another area where the direct benefit to the country is enormous -- to forecast flooding and to optimize the operation of hydroelectric dams. So it's a huge benefit in this area alone.

Our scientists are interested in using the microgravity environment for experiments. If we don't do that as a partner, no matter how junior, in the future those guys will have a requirement for this and we'll end up having to purchase space on board the space station or a U.S. or Russian craft.

And so why not help build it and become a partner -- in which case you spend the money that you're going to spend anyway. But you get the additional benefit of getting the local aerospace industry involved.

It is true, as is known publicly, that Brazil in the early part of this year had financial problems. Under those conditions the government made the decision of saying, "No. We will not let this financial crisis affect our objective of keeping the public deficit under control."

Under those conditions, the only thing you can do is to cut on engineering projects. You cannot cut the pay of civil servants or change the social security system. So the immediate action of the government is to cut down on the project expenses. And the funds allocated to the space station were a victim of this financial crisis.

Now, the financial crisis is over, and the government is in the middle of the process of re-arranging the budget expenditures to cover what Brazil is spending to build the space station.

[Laughter] It's the normal job of a government bureaucrat or administrator.