Color me unimpressed:
President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night.
Let’s see- bloated deficits, expanded entitlement programs, bloated education spending, amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, the hideously expensive presxcription drug give-away- I guess we were due for something like this. What, with NASA broadcasting pictures from Mars, I guess a trip to the moon is the first evidence of the conservatism in ‘Compassionate Conservatism.’
Is this really the direction the space program should be taking?
Emperor Misha I
Aww… c’mon, John, it’s a masterpiece! We NEED to corner the Martian vote before ’04!
Odd… For once President Panderbutt comes up with a spending spree that might actually BENEFIT our nation and all I can muster is a shrug.
Allow me to join you in disgust and indifference.
M. Scott Eiland
I can see this as being a good thing if:
1) It is done in a logical, incremental fashion that leaves a lasting infrastructure (unlike the Apollo program, which more or less faded into nothingness after its completion), and;
2) The heavy lifting for the financing of the enterprise is done by private industry.
I’ve got a wait and see attitude–barring a crash program that would be impossible to sustain and exploit in the long term, we’re talking twenty to thirty years to get to Mars. Plenty of time to plan and do it right.
Steve Malynn
Apollo program spurred science, and every dime spent was spent in the US first. This time there will probably be much “out-sourced”, but again, the work and money will predominantly be spent on terra firma located in the US.
But more than the greatest public works scam ever, the way we live today (we being those with any connection to the “first” or “second” world) would have been impossible without the advances brought about from the space program.
The moon is the necessary first step for a permanent human presence in space. IMHO, exploration of space is necessary if just to determine whether Human life is ever going to exist/sustain itself outside the atmosphere of Earth. The answer to that question is a fundamental issue to determine for avoiding the destiny of dinosaurs.
mark
I agree with Steve, and might add it makes more sense to me to try to get a permanent moon base than the international space station.
Andrew Lazarus
They’re going to look for Saddam’s WMD.
TM Lutas
The corrosive effects of government dominated, trophy space programs are on display above. There’s a very good chance that it’s not going to be a trophy program this time. There’s an economic/national security nexus that needs to be solved and part of the solution can be found on the moon.
We’re short on energy unless we keep the third world energy starved. We do that and we have a bunch of failed states breeding terrorists like mad. Lunar solar is actually a fairly practical thing because there’s no atmosphere to diffuse the energy and you can shift the energy wavelengths to something that isn’t going to be blocked as badly when you beam it down after you concentrate it.
We’re going to need ~20Terawatts of generating capacity to get the 3rd world integrated into the world economy. Anything past 12Tw really isn’t in the cards even if you forget about proliferation problems (breeder reactors for everyone) or pollution.
Kimmitt
What tax increases will cover the cost of the program?
Anderson.J.
Some strange feeling seized me when I read your comment, Kimmitt.
Does Kimmitt’s post look strange here?
No. So Kimmitt, what is the point in your comment?
There always has to be some point.
Nothing personal tho.
regards,
Anderson