Thursday, 15 January 2004

Piiigs… iiinnn… SPAAAAACE! I'd be the first in line to support a serious proposal for revitalizing America's manned space program—but when the proposal arrives sandwiched between two billion-dollar helpings of election-year pork, I begin to suspect that space exploration isn't really the goal here.

I'm a big, big believer in Dr. Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" proposal for a manned mission to Mars. Zubrin, an aerospace engineer, worked out a plan for visiting Mars that is dramatically cheaper and simpler than the alternatives: It uses the Martian atmosphere and high school-level chemistry to manufacture rocket fuel on Mars, allowing spacecraft to arrive with empty tanks and refuel for the return journey. Given NASA's budget, Zubrin's plan could not only send men to Mars but establish a permanent base there within ten years.

Bush's plan, like his father's, calls for a mission to Mars. It also calls for a space station on the moon, retiring the shuttle, building a next-generation spacecraft, and apparently for sending every registered voter in Texas, Florida and Alabama on a joyride into orbit. Like Bush's other proposals, it has no provisions for how to fund these wonderful things—except for the dangerously popular "borrow the money from Japan and China" technique, which has become our approach for everything from Medicare to immigration. Supply-side economics were irresponsible in the eighties; when the baby-boomers are a few short years away from draining our federal treasury dry, they're a recipe for ruin.

So, while I'm glad to see NASA getting attention and publicity (and goodness knows the agency could use a little revitalizing), I'm not impressed by yet another brazen attempt to buy my vote—and with borrowed money, no less. We'll talk about space travel when the government is on a sound financial footing again, but right now I want a return to fiscal sanity more than I want a return to the moon.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 11:32 am. comments.