Wednesday, January 21, 2004

So Bush announced some time back that he's calling for a return to the moon and a human voyage to Mars. To accomplish this, he's giving NASA another $1 billion. Now at first glance, it might seem like this is all a very good thing. But when you start reading the fine print, it really seems like this is all a sham. Seriously, in space exploration terms, $1 billion is chump change... try like 100 times if you seriously want to get people to Mars or even back to the moon.

They said that another $14 billion of NASA's current budget should be reallocated for this goal as well. That kills off a lot of other programs (i.e. Hubble) without putting us that much closer to Mars. To fund all this will probably require the scrapping of the space shuttle fleet and pulling out of our International Space Station commitments. Now, I think it's high time the space shuttles were replaced, but not till the replacement is in sight. And I think pulling out of the ISS is just a plain waste.

Now don't get me wrong, I think it's important that humans go to Mars- eventually. I don't think we're quite there yet. Without means to fund any of this, various items within NASA will probably get axed to pursue this goal. So actually, this whole talk of going to Mars seems like nothing more than a subtle ploy to kill off large parts of the space program. And all the while, Bush comes off looking like a hero for making a Kennedy-esque call for human space exploration. If they were serious about going to Mars, they should put their money where their mouth is.

*Budget estimate coming out soon... I'm curious to see how they intend to pay for this.

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