Giant leap II: Bush to announce plan for Mars, Moon missions

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will outline a plan for returning humans to the moon as preparation for exploring deeper space destinations, including Mars, administration sources said late Thursday.

The president's plan will call for phasing out the U.S. role in the international space station and abandoning the beleaguered space shuttle program, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the same time, the president is not expected to call for sending a human to Mars anytime soon, but instead will lay out a series of goals aimed at helping NASA recover from the Columbia disaster and build on the success of the recent landing of a robotic rock hound on the Red Planet.

Unclear late Thursday was whether the president will set out any proposed changes in the hierarchy for space exploration -- a shift that some are pushing within the administration -- to allow NASA and the Defense Department to swap more information and technology.

Sources familiar with the policy, which is similar to a proposal made by Bush's father almost 15 years ago, was developed by a team overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney. Administration officials see the initiative as a vital national security measure that would lead to development of new technologies and potential new sources of energy.

The president's announcement, which is tentatively scheduled for the middle of next week after his return from the Summit of the Americas in Mexico, will call for exploring multiple destinations, with the lunar outpost being a possible first step.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush in Florida that the president would make an announcement about space next week, but he declined to give details.

Last summer, the president ordered a top-to-bottom "review of our space policy, including our priorities and the future direction of the program, and the president will have more to say on it next week," McClellan said.

Bush has been expected to announce a major space initiative, and some had speculated that he would do so at the 100th-anniversary celebration of the Wright brothers' first flight last month in North Carolina. Instead, he only pledged to keep the United States at the forefront of world aviation.

Under Bush's proposal, astronauts would return to the moon by 2013 to test spacecraft and equipment for further exploration in deep space, including manned missions to initially orbit Mars, land and be able to return.

The last manned mission to the moon was in 1972. A total of 12 Americans walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972.

The nation's space shuttle fleet, the backbone of NASA's manned space program, is designed only for near-Earth orbit and for ferrying equipment, supplies and crew members between Earth and the space station.

When NASA's shuttle fleet resumes missions, possibly as soon as September, the three remaining orbiters would be used to finish station assembly. By 2016, after finishing research on the human response to long-duration spaceflight, NASA's role in the station would diminish, shifting the burden for maintaining the orbiting space lab to the Russians, Europeans and Japanese.

According to an account that will be published in Aviation Week & Space Technology, the White House will drop plans for a reusable orbital space plane. Congress has failed to embrace the space plane, which NASA began to pursue about three years ago.

The nation's space agency already has plans on the books for sending unmanned missions from Earth to the icy moons of Jupiter and to return to Mars with another robotic mission capable of returning to Earth with soil and rock samples.

Last Saturday, a six-wheeled robot developed by NASA landed on Mars and began sending back images of the planet.

The vehicle, called the Spirit, eventually is to begin moving about the planet, sampling the soil and rocks. A second rover is due to land on Mars on Jan. 24.

The last president to propose a manned mission to Mars was Bush's father, former President Bush, who in 1989 said Americans should lead the way "back to the moon, back to the future, and this time to stay."

When he outlined his proposal on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, then-President Bush said the next step would be "a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars."

At the time, the estimated cost was between $400 billion and $500 billion, a price tag too high for Congress, which scuttled the proposal.

Similar obstacles confront any plan that the current president might propose. Faced with a budget deficit that is expected to top $500 billion this year alone.

Bush's proposal, if it wins support in Congress, will be a significant realignment of the nation's space program, which for the last decade has seen no growth in its budget at a time when it has been trying to keep the aging shuttle fleet aloft and build a space station that has consistently run over budget.

Glenn Mahone, a spokesman for NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, said the president "is certainly committed to America's space program and to the cause of exploration." Mahone declined to discuss details of Bush's plan.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, among others in Congress, has called for an expansion of the U.S. space program, including a return to the moon.

Apollo 11, which landed on the moon in July 1969, was the first of six to successfully make lunar landings. The others were missions 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, which made the last landing in December 1972.

But you completely ignored my perfectly rational reasoning as to why those functions which you say are not arbitrary could be reasonably considered arbitrary.

A reasonable person would understand that my list of functions is not arbitrary; it comes from the U.S. Constitution.

You seem to be hung up on toll roads, so allow me to clear away that particular issue so it won't continue to interfere with this discussion. I wouldn't mind if all roads were toll roads, as long as the tolls were levied automatically by remote detectors, didn't impede the flow of traffic, and was billed to my bank card. Such technology exists today, I've heard. Having 100% toll roads would eliminate one excuse for gasoline taxes, property taxes, income taxes, etc. and would probably lower my overall travel expenses because I drive fewer miles than the average citizen.

Hell, you're worried about fractions of a penny per year on your tax dollars for a long-term program of exploration and development that could lead to untold wealth

If you want to voluntarily invest your money in something you think will pay off, go right ahead ! Again, government officials should not be trying to make speculative financial investments with tax money that we have no choice in handing to them. And quit implying that I'm cheap. You have no idea how much of my money I spend, or on what. I don't feel bad keeping that information private, because my money was not confiscated from taxpayers with no choice in the matter. To put my previous statement another way: You say you cannot put a price on discovery, but you are happy to send the US taxpayer the bill for it.

You deserve credit for raising your child. But that is something you volunteered for. Nobody (I hope) forced you to do it. Am I getting through now ?

If we turn our backs on the stars, and crawl back to our holes....we lose everything we think we've saved.

I won't turn my back on the stars, nor crawl into a hole. I love learning about the universe; I look forward to all the future discoveries of science. Again, you imply that without government funds, exploration is crippled ! I've offered ideas for alternative sources of funding...you dismissed them.

...it is a path that leads us to stagnation and death as a people...

What a terribly pessimistic and limited view of the world! Please get a life here. Don't grow old hoping for some government-funded discovery of life on another planet!

And quit implying that I'm cheap.

I'm not implying anything. You're making the statements. I'm just reading what you write. And it's clear to me and probably everyone else that your previous postings, as well as this one, have at their heart one argument. And that is, it's all about bucks. Just look at the words you use, cost, bill, my tax dollars, my money, public vs. private funding, etc. It's nothing but money, profits, bean counting, and the like.

I'm in the research business myself and I'm used to these arguments. Inevitably, it comes down to trying to convince someone whose more interested in pinching pennies today to meet some short-term need for making the goal on some bottom line, and throwing away the chance to gain immensely more down the road. I understand. It's human nature to grab for the comforts of now and fight to preserve those, than take a risk to build something better tomorrow.

You have no idea how much of my money I spend, or on what. I don't feel bad keeping that information private, because my money was not confiscated from taxpayers with no choice in the matter. To put my previous statement another way: You say you cannot put a price on discovery, but you are happy to send the US taxpayer the bill for it.

But that is something you volunteered for. Nobody (I hope) forced you to do it. Am I getting through now ?

Are you crazy? Are you saying I volunteered to have a handicapped child? If so, that's pretty sick. Nobody volunteers for that. Sometimes it happens, and you deal with it. Anyway, you missed the point. The fact that one does not benefit immediately, if at all, from a given situation in a financial sense does not necessarily mean that it is not worth doing, voluntary or not.

Geez, you people are something else somethimes...

Again, you imply that without government funds, exploration is crippled ! I've offered ideas for alternative sources of funding...you dismissed them.

I did not. I said that nothing I posted precluded non-government initiatives. You're the one limited options by arguing, on the basis of money, that public expenditures in this effort are somehow bad. I take a more flexible position, that there are reasonable arguments to be made that long-term benefits can be realized, from maintaining a unified, national approach to the effort. That allows more flexibility in the the motivation for short-term profit is not the primary driver. You are able to take a longer view, encompassing the potential for future discoveries that may provide a return many times over on your initial investment. It's too important to leave to "that's the breaks".

What a terribly pessimistic and limited view of the world! Please get a life here. Don't grow old hoping for some government-funded discovery of life on another planet!

Thanks. I do have a life, and it's not one that is limited to a vision of mankind crawling about the muck of this world, counting the pennies we think we've saved on our tax bill of today, but have in fact cost us our destiny as an adventurous and visionary people to are not bound by the worries of fattening our wallets in the here and now.

This is getting a bit long and no one is going to change their minds in this forum, so let me close it out below and then you can have the last word if you're so inclined.

The spirit of a nation and it's people, collectively, can be likened, in many ways, to the spirit of a person. There are those who spend their lives in pursuit of material comforts, who grub for every last penny to keep to themselves, who spend more effort and energy trying to keep things the way they are because they provide a false sense of security and some measure of material comfort. But it's a trap. When one ceases to reach beyond oneself, when one fears spending a few pennies today in the hopes of gaining much more later, the spirit of such a person is eroded and eventually withers away and dies. They maintain an outward appearance of health and strength, but their soul is dead. Often they find themselves denigrating and sneering at the dreams of others, because they have none of their own. They are likes ghosts pointing empty sleeves and laughing at the hopes of others around them, who do have a hope and vision of a better future. And when they die they leave nothing, no legacy of their time in this life other than a few tarnished and corroded pennies that they think they've saved, but leave nothing beyond that, because, in a sense, they've already died. And when they go to their graves there will be no one to pull the grass up over their heads, no one to mourn them, no one to give a damn.

But there is another kind of person, one who may sacrifice a little today in terms of material comfort, and perhaps live with a few less pennies in his bank account, but has a spirit that is alive and vital within them. And the kind of life and legacy they leave is one that lives on beyond their relatively few years on this Earth, one that leaves the seeds of the future, one wherein the petty concerns over a fraction of a penny here and there on a tax bill has insignificance compared with the treasures they gain for themselves and their offspring. And the legacy of those individuals is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on, far away, woven into the fabric of other men's lives. It is a legacy and future with hope, not one bounded by petty concerns and the need to have a dollar or two more in our bank accounts when we die.

We can be a young nation again, if only we have the will. We can reach for and build a future that is perhaps not realizable in our own lives, and certainly may not have an immediate monetary reward. But it will leave a legacy of the American spirit that will not only be written in textbooks stored on some musty shelf in an archive, but is written in the stars.

..your postings...have at their heart one argument...it's all about bucks.

BTW, I'm not worried about increased taxes as long as George Bush is President. I'm not worried about someone taking more money from me personally. My concern is for proper use of federal funds. In case you haven't been reading Earth news, there is no money left in the U.S. treasury. It's all gone. It's in the red. Negative numbers. Big debt. Congress, and yes, even Bush, have spent the nation into debt in order to buy votes via more federal programs, commonly known as 'pork'. Some people say that the debt is so big, it no longer matters what expenditures are. Do you think there are no consequences for deficit spending ? When is the debt too big ? When should we begin paying the debt down ? How about now ? You are very generous in your willingness to spend other people's money, including that of future generations of Americans.

And even if there were a surplus, it should be returned to the taxpayers and/or be used for government necessities that have been neglected, such as border security, instead of "investing" in programs unrelated to government that just might "pay off".

I'm in the research business myself and I'm used to these arguments.

NOW we're getting somewhere. Are you a government employee ? Do you or your organization receive or seek government funding ? Do you lobby for government funds ?

Are you crazy?

Not in my opinion. But I'm crazy enough to answer all your questions.

Are you saying I volunteered to have a handicapped child?

You said you were raising a handicapped child. I'm saying you are doing so voluntarily. Other people less responsible and less capable than you have given up such children for adoption. In other words, the government did not force you into your commitment under penalty of imprisonment. In contrast, the government forces us all to involuntarily bear the burden of its spending, whether on necessities or on pork.

When one ceases to reach beyond oneself, when one fears spending a few pennies today in the hopes of gaining much more later, the spirit of such a person is eroded and eventually withers away and dies...Often they find themselves denigrating and sneering at the dreams of others, because they have none of their own... But there is another kind of person, one who may sacrifice a little today in terms of material comfort, and perhaps live with a few less pennies in his bank account, but has a spirit that is alive and vital within them. And the kind of life and legacy they leave is one that lives on beyond their relatively few years on this Earth, one that leaves the seeds of the future, one wherein the petty concerns over a fraction of a penny here and there on a tax bill has insignificance compared with the treasures they gain for themselves and their offspring. And the legacy of those individuals is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on, far away, woven into the fabric of other men's lives. It is a legacy and future with hope...

I agree with all that. What makes you think I doubt the worthiness of exploration and research ? I love exploration and research...and adventure. Daily, I sacrifice today's material comfort in order to invest in my future, and not just financially but with time and effort as well. I invest in my family, church, learning, etc. There are an infinite number of worthy endevors out there. If you are so pumped up about space exploration, why not join with others who are voluntarily sponsoring it:

http://www.space-frontier.org/

Again, it's simply not the U.S. government's proper role to be adventurous with public funds that were entrusted to them for the purposes of governing, no more than it is your bosses' role to suddenly take a bite out of your wages to buy you something that he's certain would be "good for you". Once government began funding non-Constitutional activities, there is no end to it, and we have the mess we see in Washington today.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.