OT (sorta): Bush Will Announce New Space Missions

Permanent space station on the moon? For what purpose? The moon is merely a
dusty rock with little intrinsic value other then it looks pretty in the night
sky and operates the tides. We don't need a moon base so why spend any money
for one? Further, robotic rovers are a much cheaper solution then manned
missions.

Price tag: ONE TRILLION DOLLARS? Apparently the George Bush plan is to spend
this country into economic collapse and have the resultant military
dictatorship guard the Constitution. Oh yeah, and be sure to cut taxes so it's
all done on credit.......and the piled up debt crushes the next generations of
medically uninsured Americans to powder.

THE most pressing (economic, and therefore, military security) issue facing the
US is dependence upon foreign energy sources, i.e., oil in politically unstable
places like the Arabian peninsula. What we need is a fusion energy research
program directed at freeing the US from the vast majority of its dependence
upon sources of oil coming from areas that could rapidly fall under the
dictatorial control of jihadi nut jobs that wish to destroy the West. Stacking
up further debt just tempts them into believing that they could easily cause
economic chaos via an oil embargo or terror attack and set off a cascade of
financial collapse. (And by the way, just where is Osama? Please catch THAT guy
before heading to Mars. And that stable government in Iraq that the US
taxpayers are footing the bill for? Where IS that?)

Has GW Bush considered the possible consequences to our foreign alliances
should the US economy ever default? Their economies would crumble.....life
savings would be wiped out. And the resentment will be squarely directed at the
US. Real world war will come, and our allies will have fled.

It's high time to light a fire under Energy Secretary Spence Abraham's rear and
get this country's scientific research seriously working on a fusion power
solution. The latest from the world of physics says creation is much stranger
then previously thought (i.e., string theory). Controlled and contained fusion
may be possible.

I am starting to wonder if GW's cocaine days haven't left him metally retarded.
He sure as hell isn't a very good geopolitician, strategic thinker, or military
general. He seems to have no grasp of the workings of history and, if he keeps
talking about carelessly ****ing the taxpayer's money away, he is liable to
talk himself right out of a job come election time. There are FAR more pressing
issues for tax money then a moon base and Mars mission.
Dave
(rant mode off.....we return you to your regularly scheduled programing)


__________________________
WASHINGTON (Jan. 8) - 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.

Bush won't propose sending Americans to Mars anytime soon; rather, he envisions
preparing for the mission more than a decade from now, one official said.

In addition to proposing the first trip to the moon since December 1972, the
president wants to build a permanent space station there.

Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively reinvigorate the space
program, which has been demoralized by a series of setbacks, including the
space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush's announcement
would come in the middle of next week.

Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to
rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.

Many insiders had speculated he might set forth goals at the 100th anniversary
of the Wright brothers' famed flight last month in North Carolina. Instead, he
said only that America would continue to lead the world in aviation.

Earlier, 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.

It was the Columbia tragedy that helped force a discussion of where NASA should
venture beyond the space shuttle and international space station. The panel
that investigated the Columbia accident called for a clearly defined long-term
mission - a national vision for space that has gone missing for three decades.

House Science Committee spokeswoman Heidi Tringe said lawmakers on the panel
''haven't been briefed on the specifics'' of the plan but expected an
announcement.

Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, a member of the House Science Committee, said he
welcomed the move because he has tried to get the president more interested in
space exploration.

''I had the feeling the last 2 1/2 years people would rather make a trip to the
grocery store than a trip to the moon because of the economy,'' Hall said. ''As
things are turning around, we need to stay in touch with space'' and the
science spinoffs it provides.

Engineers would have to build new spacecraft for the trips to and from the moon
and Mars. If the Apollo-style mission design was adopted, there would also be
the need for landing craft that would undock from the mother ship and touch
down to the moon or Mars.

Mission plans, crew size and other factors would have to be considered in the
design of such craft.

No firm cost estimates have been developed, but informal discussions have put
the cost of a Mars expedition at nearly a trillion dollars, depending on how
ambitious the project was. The cost of a moon colony would depend on what NASA
wants to do on the lunar surface.

On Saturday, NASA landed a six-wheeled robot on Mars to study the planet.
However, the Spirit rover is stuck because the air bags that cushioned its
landing are obstructing its movement. A second rover named Opportunity was sent
in its wake and should land on Jan. 24.

Asked Wednesday whether the success of the Mars rovers could lead to a human
mission to Mars, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said, ''The rovers are a
precursor mission - kind of an advance team - to figuring out what the
conditions are on the planet, and once we figure out how to deal with the human
effects, we can then send humans to explore in real time.''

While answering questions on the White House Web site, O'Keefe said
interplanetary exploration depends on ''what we learn and whether we can
develop the power and ... propulsion capabilities necessary to get there faster
and stay longer and potentially support humans in doing so.''

In 1989 on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, his father,
the first President Bush, called for lunar colonies and a Mars expedition:
''I'm not proposing a 10-year plan like Apollo; I'm proposing a long-range,
continuing commitment. ... For the new century: Back to the moon; back to the
future. And this time, back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a
journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars.''

The prohibitively expensive plan went nowhere.

No one, least of all members of Congress, knows how NASA would pay for lunar
camps or Mars expeditions. When the first President Bush proposed such a
project, the estimated price tag was $400 billion to $500 billion.

The moon is just three days away while Mars is at least six months away, and
the lunar surface therefore could be a safe place to shake out Martian
equipment. Observatories also could be built on the moon, and mining camps
could be set up to gather helium-3 for conversion into fuel for use back on
Earth.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, among others, has called for an
expansion of the U.S. space program, including a return to the moon. The United
States put 12 men on the moon between July 1969 and December 1972.

An interagency task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney has been
considering options for a space mission since summer.

Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, has said
that before deciding to race off to the moon or Mars, the nation needs to
complete the international space station and provide the taxi service to
accommodate a full crew of six or seven. The station currently houses two.

At the same time, Glenn has said, NASA could be laying out a long-term plan,
setting a loose timetable and investing in the engineering challenges of
sending people to Mars. The only sensible reason for going to the moon first,
he says, would be to test the technology for a Mars trip.

AP-NY-01-08-04 2317EST