  I had said that I was going to write about Bush and his call for the moon and Mars. I have been struggling with what to do or think about this all. I am really torn in that I personally think we should already be well on the road towards those goals and should have never abandoned our space program as we did back in the mid eighties. Yes we abandoned it. After Challenger we pretty much just let it go and have never really made any attempt to get back in the "race". Once we lost Werner Von Braun and his true vision we lost our way.
Von Braun was undoubtedly the father of our space program in its current form (along with Goddard to a lesser degree). Braun had planned to have us on Mars already with semi-permanent moon bases as the launching pad for the cosmos. Many would say that he was a horrible man that helped enable Hitler to strike terror into the Brits and also helped allow for the killing of the Jews. Werner was never that political. He was first and foremost a scientist hell bent on one thing. Building rockets to go to the moon.
At the end of WW2 we were lucky enough for him to know which side to join (ours and not the Soviets...he dissapeared and sought out our forces for surrender). We got him and brought him initially to Alabama (the reason was because Alabama at the time suprisingly is reminicent of Germany without the extreme cold weather. So he was there and started to work. Initially he was working on a modified version of his V2 to deliver weapons for the military. Again he still wanted to go to the moon...but alas he was still stuck with developing weapons. Soon Kennedy issued his challenge to the US and the World.
Von Braun now had a mission. Get a man to the moon and back. Well we all know how it ended...we got there. Now we lost the initiative in the late seventies because space was expensive and the Rusians had given up on the moon and were working on space stations and such. So we put modest effort into a space station. We also designed and built the Space Shuttle (or STS).
The Space Shuttle was at first thought of that it would "make money". They would be able to turn shuttles around every couple of weeks and they would carry payloads to space for the military and others...essentially they would rent out their cargo capacity and pay for the program. Well that never worked really well.. We have now had two of them go down. One was because of gross negligence on the part of NASA bean counters, the other was a fluke that had been foreseen but nothing done about it. NASA has an anual budget of around 15-20 billion...and this is practically nothing in the budget...the numbers have been pretty consistant over the years...while not technically the budget hasn't been cut all these years, but as a percentage or value the budget has shrunk. Bush has proposed we head back to the moon and soon, then head off to Mars.
What he didn't do is actually figure out how much it would cost or how he would pay for it. He asked for modest increases in funding (a billion over several years with massive fund redirection within NASA itself). Now one thing we should have learned coming out of the eighties is that you can not have a stingy budget on time or money. When you do that you get accidents and you actually see costs rise. The perverse thing about it all is for the relatively low amount of money we have put into the space program since its inception we have seen (I heard the figure somewhere...if I can find it I will post it) over 20 trillion dollars of economic activity from the small investment. It has been simply the best investment that the government has ever made.
We do need to go. We need to be back on the moon. We need to go to Mars...we need to do it because we are human and we have the urge to explore. It is in us. The administration wants to make this into an evil thing though...they want to do it unilaterally so they can militarize. That is wrong.
I would propose that instead of competing against the Chinese or any other nation we need to involve them for the same goal. We need all of the world on this because it will truely be a huge task. The moon is easy. In flight times it is insugnificant. Mars is a tad different. We need the Russians because they have the long term space exposure experience.
With them and the drive of the Chinese, Japanese Space Agency, European Space Agency...all the rest we could get there easier and with less risk overall. If we involve all the people of the planet in this goal than we can make the world better. Bush doesn't want that...co-operation means that we have to loose...we have to loose our "need" to be number one. We can do it...but it will take time. I wish that this idea wasn't so politicized because really going to the moon and mars would be great, and be good for the world...unfortunately it likely isn't going happen under the current administration. I could ramble on about this for a long long time...we need to do it...not because we need to be number one...but because we need to make a move back towards that pioneering spirit and the drive to get things done right.
I dunno...we could just do so much better. 
