Ponderance

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Mars Ahoy!

Okay, so while it's a political stunt to try and deflect from the economy and the occupation of Iraq, Bush's announcement of NASA's longterm planning does capture the excitement surrounding the current focus on Mars. Yahoo! News reports:

President George W Bush proposed to develop a new spacecraft to carry Americans back to the moon by 2015, and to establish a long-term base there as an eventual springboard to Mars and beyond. According to details released by the White House ahead of a presidential speech to NASA, Bush will withdraw the US from the International Space Station by 2010 and retire the space shuttle fleet at about the same time. Bush wants to use the moon as a base for more ambitious missions to Mars and into the deeper reaches of the solar system, the White House said. An extended human presence on the moon "will enable astronauts to develop new technologies and harness the moon's abundant resources to allow manned exploration of more challenging environments," the White House said in a prepared statement. "The experience and knowledge gained on the moon will serve as a foundation for human missions beyond the moon, beginning with Mars."

Sadly telling, though, is that all the long-term goals are set long after Bush's term of office ends, leaving other Presidents to carry the economic follow-through! Oh, and this has to be the funniest sentence in space-related reporting I've read for ages: