Posted on 01/08/2004 11:19:24 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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.
Why not send the 8 - 10 million illegal immigrants to the moon and to Mars where they can resettle it and work instead of giving them amnesty?
There were plenty of people who thought that the money given to those explorers was a waste. The benefits mostly were long term. But the benefits that would result were unimaginable.
What a blowhard.
Put NASA's equipment, and possibly their personnnel's services, up for bids. Let the free market take it wherever it can go. We agree on Klintoon's International space station - it's a waste. But some government employees who are making their living off it would disagree. Let those employees offer their services to private industry - if there's a market for them. They should do that not because it's easy - but because it's hard.
What a blowhard.
Ohhhhh! Ouch! That was just so clever and cutting. I'm so humiliated...
*yawn*
Just because elected representatives keep getting elected after throwing our public money around doesn't make it right.
Examples of essential services are things that only government can handle: defense, law enforcement, the judiciary, interstate highways, elections.
You're also being selective and logically inconsistent by insisting that those things you think the government should be doing are perfectly fine for your tax dollars. You listed a few. But, using the same logic (private vs. public expenditures), the same arguments apply. Unhappy with your tax dollars spent on the military? Well, sure, get the government out of that, too. Turn it over to private enterprise. There are mercenaries out there who will fight for you. Free up those tax dollars to contribute to individuals or private militias who will provide you with security for you and your family. Highways? Hell, yes. Grab a shovel and start digging, tough guy. Or save those tax dollars and build your own toll roads. You may have to pay a dozen or so tolls just to get to work everyday, or when you go to the grocery, but, hey, that's private business and the government shouldn't be in it. Flight control? Damn straight. Save those tax dollars going to the FAA. You and your neighbors can set up a radar station in your backyard to guide those planes through your airspace. Hey, it's private business, and I don't seem one damn word in the Constitution about the government's function being to operate radar stations.
Not gonna happen? Unworkable, you say? Very likely correct. Why? Well, you know the answer to that as well as I do. It's because those things either never would get done, or, if they did, they would be incredibly costly, wasteful, and inefficient if attempted in that way. There would be a plethora of agencies and institutions of incredible unwieldiness and complexity, for no good reason. There are somethings that are in the national interest that are best accomplished using a unified approach, wherein resources and capabilities can be pooled and managed to achieve the desired goal. That may require expenditure of taxpayer funds, and objecting to it simply on that basis is an ill-considered and shortsighted approach.
So, a national policy is needed, for these and other things. People have correctly concluded that a long-term program of exploration and development, perhaps having a payoff not realizable for decades or centuries, is something that is unlikely to be pursued strictly by for-profit, private enterprise, where the focus seems to be, more and more, on short-term gain and immediate, complete satisfaction and payoff. Further, those benefits may be of such a broad-based and beneficial nature that they could or should not fall within the exclusive control of private business, but perhaps some public oversight is appropriate and legitimate. Thus, it is correctly considered to fall within the legitimate purview of federal endeavor. The system allows for your input on that, but to dismiss such programs and initiatives on the basis of it involving expenditure of public funds leads you down a path you may not wish to go.
YES, chimera, I am being selective with the list of essential federal government services - and so should Uncle Sam! It is not an arbitrary (you may want to look that up at Dictionary.com) list.
Defense, law enforcement, the judiciary, and elections are on the list because they must be performed per the Constitution and for obvious public safety reasons. Interstate highways are on the list because they are essential for the transportation of goods and people, essential for economic activity. And as you pointed out, air traffic control is another service that must be performed cooperatively by a single authority for reasons of public safety, so it is naturally a government function.
In contrast, space exploration and yes, even my undersea adventure, are non-essential. NASA may have helped you in your personal quest to ascend the pillars of sunlight, to realize and understand in an intimate and lasting way who we are as a people, and where we may be going as an intelligent species, but still, it is not an essential function of goverment. Maybe space exploration will "never get done" unless a government does it, but that's the breaks.
...a national policy is needed
I agree. The national policy should be to get the federal government out of all nonessential activities not specified in the Constitution.
to dismiss such programs and initiatives on the basis of it involving expenditure of public funds leads you down a path you may not wish to go.
I'm happy to go down this path...you may learn something.
Have you tried meditation ? I hear that it's great for ascending pillars of sunlight, and it costs you nothing but time.
Why don't you start a business and create a few jobs yourself? The tax breaks for small businesses are still very decent.
People who are always looking for sugar daddy government to take care of them on the taxpayer dime are Democrats in substance if not in form.
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