This past week, the Bush Administration cooked up another glitzy proposition devoid of logic and general common sense. Not content with the successful unmanned mission to Mars this month, Mr. Bush now thinks it is a good idea to send astronauts to the moon again. However, the Administration has no plans to repeat one of the Apollo moon-landing missions. The plan kicks up that Texan heat by predicting a moon colony within 15 years and a colony on Mars within 30 years.
Now before you think that I hate NASA or the astronauts, I want to clarify a few things. I think exploration is a vital part of the human race; space exploration is one of the most bold and sophisticated things that humankind has ever accomplished. I also believe that a semi-permanent space station is necessary for scientific advancement and that sending people into orbit is the only way that the space station experiments can be performed.
However, a moon landing is an extremely complicated and dangerous feat to perform and for what purpose? There is a reason that there have been no trips to the moon since 1972: it's unnecessarily dangerous for people to land on the moon without gaining anything that a robot couldn't do cheaper. I do realize that it's much more interesting to watch a man jump around in a spacesuit and make seemingly impossible golf drives, but how does that advance our knowledge of our universe?
NASA's new Spirit Rover that landed on the Martian surface on January 3, 2004 is another step forward in the right direction. The rover sent back color pictures with a resolution higher and more detailed than any astronaut's memory. Sorry, Buzz. In addition to the amazing photographs, the rover will also analyze many aspects of Mars' rocks, soil, and temperature, and will transmit these and other important bits of data back to mission control here on Earth. A team of 250 NASA scientists, specialists, and researchers will be controlling the robot and interpreting the massive amount of information it sends back in the coming months and years. It should be noted that the actual mission of the rover will last about three months—that's thirty times longer than the time spent on the moon's surface in the last lunar mission.
Therefore, unmanned space exploration is safer (obviously, since nobody leaves Earth), accomplishes more than a manned mission would, and can conduct longer explorations with less provisions. But there must be a major drawback, right? The cost… it's always the cost. Au contraire, my dear readers. While the Spirit mission does pack a hefty price tag, a record cost of $820 million, it is only a tiny fraction of what it would cost to send a manned mission to the red planet.
In 1989, a project to send an American to Mars was discussed but rejected for its burden to the taxpayers. That endeavor, which did not include a moon base, would have cost the American people between $400 billion and $500 billion in 1989 dollars. Not surprisingly, the man behind that plan was G. W. Bush's father; a man, I might add, who caused the national deficit to reach its second highest point ever, right behind his son's obscene deficit level. It seems that fiscal irresponsibility—as well as a tendency to attack a certain mid-east country—runs in that family.
So what is the point of manned missions to the moon and Mars? I'm not quite sure. It could be that Bush holds the thought of going where no man (or woman) has gone before in the highest esteem. It could be that his cabinet members and others who support this plan have already left the planet. Perhaps the Bush Administration has forgotten about the inherent problems with the aging space shuttle that caused the catastrophic explosion of Columbia on reentry. Or it could just be Karl Rove engineering one of his grand schemes to make Bush look important (like May's aircraft carrier landing, Thanksgiving in Iraq, etc).
I can only say one thing for certain at this point: I won't be supporting any president who overlooks the facts, costs, and the lives of the astronauts in pursuit of his own agenda, regardless of political party.