Posted on 01/11/2004 4:41:32 PM PST by anymouse
Space-exploration proposals that President Bush is preparing to put into his next budget will not undermine his administration's goal of cutting the federal deficit in half within five years, Treasury Secretary John Snow said Sunday.
Snow said the new space proposals, which include a permanent settlement on the moon and setting a goal of sending Americans to Mars, will be undertaken "within a framework of fiscal responsibility."
Snow said the administration's budget, which will be sent to Congress on Feb. 2, will outline the new space proposals plus a plan that will accomplish the goal of cutting record budget deficits in half through a combination of stronger economic growth and spending restraint.
"We can do both. We really can," Snow said in an interview on ABC's "This Week." "This is a country of enormous resources, and we have the capacity to pursue a number of priorities at one time, but we have to do so within the framework of fiscal responsibility. I think you'll see that reflected in the budget."
Snow said that Bush was "not one to shy away from bold visions."
Snow's Cabinet colleague, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, agreed that Bush's space ideas are audacious. But he rejected the suggestion that Americans might consider the plans' probable huge cost wasteful at a time with millions of people unemployed and the country facing other expensive needs on Earth.
"America has always needed a challenge of a big and bold idea," Evans said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"I can also tell you that this program will be within a responsible fiscal budget because the president knows, once again, the basic ingredients to growing an economy and creating more jobs are cutting taxes and controlling spending."
"Whatever the program is, however big it is," Evans said, "it will be within a responsible fiscal budget."
In previewing Bush's official announcement, coming this week, White House aides did not discuss costs of the project. Bush's father proposed during his presidency a more muted project, which would have aimed at putting Americans on Mars without mention of a moon base. The cost of that enterprise was projected at $400 billion to $500 billion in 1989 dollars, far too rich for Congress to consider.
Two members of the current Congress, both Democratic contenders to take Bush's job, said Sunday that the president's moon-Mars ideas appeared to be misplaced priorities.
"I haven't looked at the numbers lately, but I don't know that we can go off on a new moon mission or Mars mission, if that's the suggestion, and just have the money to do something in addition to completing the space station," said Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., interviewed on CBS' "Face the Nation" from Des Moines, Iowa. "We're pretty far down the road on the space station, and we need to complete it and have the success from it that we need."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said as much as he admires the space program President Kennedy's moon-shot program was an early attraction to politics he would prefer to spend the money on an "American Center for Cures" to find cures for chronic diseases still bedeviling the world. "If we had that kind of money, ... frankly I think that's more important to the American people than that kind of space voyage at this point in our history," said Lieberman, speaking on "Late Edition from his campaign in New Hampshire.
On ABC, Snow said the administration remains confident that the economy is beginning to rebound at a strong enough rate to make a significant dent in the unemployment rate. Both Snow and Evans shrugged off a disappointing report Friday that showed only 1,000 jobs were created in December as the jobless rate dropped to 5.7 percent not from new hiring but from the decisions by hundreds of thousands of discouraged workers to leave the labor market.
Snow said while the administration was not satisfied with current job creation at present, it remained convinced that job growth would strengthen in coming months, reflecting the rebound in economic growth that started last summer.
"Everything we know about economics indicates that, as you get an economy into high gear, as you get a strong recovery under way, it does translate into jobs," Snow said. "I am very confident this recovery will translate into job creation."
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Yeah. Right. And these guys exist in candycand land:
I'm not Mr. Snow; but I'll take a swing at it.
Similar statements were made during the Kennedy administration concerning the moon missions. But, when one considers the return we got on our investment, the return is several orders of magnitude greater than what the space mission was itself. For the sake of arguement, let's assume that absolutely NO US pride was gained. Let's also assume that the rest of the world either held our efforts in contempt, or as an extravegant display of vanity.
Do you think you would have a PC in your home if not for the moon mission? How about hydrazine, a forerunner of other exotic fuels that had to be developed for space? This lead to new non-corrosive oil and engine additives we use in our gasoline today. What about the knowledge gleaned from satellites, that now makes satelite TV, cell phones and GPS units not only available for military efforts, but are available to anyone for a very inexpensive cost.
The space missions required huge amounts of data to be transmitted on rather limited bandwidths (at that time); this led to real-time data compression, error correction and encryption that is being used today in your CD and DVD players. Without the lessons that were learned decades ago, either we would have competing CD/DVD error correction standards, or would be paying royalties to some professor who may have later discovered the various properties of digital data recovery, encryption and compression.
In the realm of medical science, the field of remote sensing did not exist at nearly the detail it does today. Magnetic Resonance Mapping is a direct spin-off of the medical sciences developed during the moon missions. One of the greatest tools used in science today, the Electon Microscope, is another example of spin off technolgies. We also have whole families of plastics that were developed, that had it not been for NASA, it is very unlikely they would exist today.
Does everything we enjoy from the 60's forward directly map to the space program? Well, if not directly so, certainly from spin-offs from that program. The moon missions forced areas of science to be developed that had not been investigated earlier. The mars mission will once again force us to look closely at what we know today, and find ways to improve or invent new methods of doing things. Going to Mars is the short term return, the long term return on our investment won't be realized for nearly a decade.
Yes you are correct. However, we can't get to Mars with that "chump change". What does this mean? Bush's whole Mars and Moon plan is nothing more than political pandering in an election year. In 2005, the Mars mission and plans for a replacement for the shuttle will be scuttled. NASA's increased funds will instead be used (wasted) on fixing/upgrading the shuttle fleet and the international space station.
Does anyone have Snow's e-mail address? I have a bridge that I'll sell to him cheap.
For starters, NASA will probably contract out everything, except, of course, budget management. Keep an eye out for RFQs.
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