It’s looking more and more likely that Bush will call for a new US policy on space travel, including the establishment of a permanent Moon Base.
The cynic in me says it’s all hype. Election year stunting. Posturing to the Chinese and the EU. Spending money we don’t have to spend. A useless gesture that, even if it succeeds, will get us someplace we don’t need to go, for no reason other than being there, and courting disaster the entire way.
The dreamer, the kid, the sf addict, the optimist says, “I am so there.”
I just hope that there’s room for some private enterprise efforts in this endeavor — some private investment, some approaches encouraged by the Administration beyond a monolithic NASA/DoD bureaucracy.
But a moon base? Yeah. I can dig it. I hope it happens.
Dick Cheney has been pushing for this from the very beginning of the Bush Administration. The active review has been going on since last May. This initiative also appears unreleated to the Columbia disaster. The last time a president successfully pushed a major space initiative was when Ronald Reagan pushed for a permanent space station in January 1984.
A couple of other things I forgot to mention. All the projects are judged against two goals:
1. They must take a reasonable length of time.
2. Must not require major new federal spending.
This should prompt new thinking concerning public/private partnerships.
This has not been the last time that a return to the moon and going to Mars have been proposed. President Bush’s father proposed the same on the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 in 1989.
And the anniversary was on December 14th, very close to State of the Union.
Anyway, I feel just like you, Dave. I do not believe his hype, but in the event I am soo there!
Blogging from the moon :”)
Why should there be public/private partnership when all it really is is just a boon to Aerospace industry?
NASA has historically been extremely provincial with respect to space exploration. However, the large cost of the missions here should disabuse them from this. My thinking is there needs to be a lot more competition ala the way the military let out the F-22 bidding. Yes, it would be a boon to the aerospace industry, but let’s have some competition.
We can have the same kind of success we’ve had with the Space Station.
The Station exists to give the Shuttle something to do.
The Shuttle program exists to service the Station.
Both really exist to funnell high-tech pork to Florida, Texas and California.
The Shuttles probably can’t last too much longer.
Damned straight Cheney’s porkovores are interested!
On the way into work this morning, NPR had a report on Hubble being killed with this proposal. Since it doesn’t support the “Mission”, it is going to be defunded.
All of the Gyro will fail in six to nine months…and thats all folks.
The space science portion of the budget will grow 25% over five years rather than 50%. Some of this is due to the transfer of the Prometheus project (nuclear power spacecraft) to the new exploration division. The Hubble refit cancellation is more a function of the Columbia disaster than anything else. As far as I know the James Webb telescope is still on the books.
There’s been talk about decommissioning Hubble for some time — though this sounds earlier than what was intended.