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Bush sets course for Moon and Mars

Posted on: Thursday, 15 January 2004, 06:00 CST

President George W. Bush sounded a new call for manned space exploration on Wednesday, reviving a vision put forth by his father 15 years ago: returning to the Moon and eventually sending astronauts on to Mars.

Today, we set a new course for America's space program, Bush said in a speech at space agency headquarters.

Bush outlined a set of proposals to carry astronauts beyond our orbit to other worlds and to put human footsteps into the lunar dust for the first time in more than three decades.

The president said the United States should commit itself to completing work on the International Space Station, in conjunction with America's 15 partners, by 2010.

He called for a resumption of the space shuttle program, which was rocked by the Columbia disaster early last year, as soon as possible. And by 2010, as the work on the space station is completed, the shuttle program should be retired, he said.

Bush also called for development of a new space-exploration vehicle by 2014, with a Moon landing as early as the following year. Very soon after that, he said, the Moon should become a launching point to missions beyond.

The president is expected to propose an increase of about 5 percent, or $750 million, in next year's budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with similar increases to follow over the next several years.

Bush called for shifting spending within NASA in striving for the goals he outlined Wednesday. And, in an obvious effort to deflate critics of the space program in advance, he said the reach for the stars is as much a part of the American heritage as was the Lewis and Clark expedition two centuries ago.

Bush asserted that space exploration had also produced countless tangible benefits advances in weather forecasting, computers and medicine and that more would follow.

Some scientists question the wisdom of human space exploration. And there are sure to be sharp questions from nonscientists, especially in this election year, on how much money should be spent reaching for the stars when so many problems persist on Earth.

One prominent Democrat, John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, pre-emptively criticized Bush's Mars proposal as a wasteful and costly diversion.

Bush spoke at a NASA headquarters where people are savoring the triumphs of the Mars rover and the striking pictures from the red planet.

His speech was inevitably reminiscent of President John F. Kennedy's speech to Congress in May 1961. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth, he said.

On Wednesday, Bush delivered a message in some ways similar to Kennedy's. And in a sense, he picked up a torch from his own father. In 1989, the first President George Bush proposed establishment of a base on the Moon and sending astronauts to Mars. But the plans faded away, in part because of the estimated cost of $400 billion.

The circumstances are considerably different today than they were in 1989, and vastly different from those of 1961. When Kennedy spoke, only a dozen or so satellites had been launched into space. About half had been launched by the Soviet Union, including the very first, on Oct. 4, 1957. Only two men had flown in space, and again the Russians were first. Yuri Gagarin was aloft for 1 hour 48 minutes on April 12, 1961. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard Jr. became the first American in space.

Kennedy's speech was very much a cold war call to arms. He referred to the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, and he asserted that progress in space could help the undecided peoples of the world make a determination of which road they should take, meaning to follow the path of the Stars and Stripes or that of the Hammer and Sickle.

No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space, Kennedy said, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

Billions of dollars were spent and several lives were lost before two Americans became the first humans to set foot on the Moon, on July 20, 1969.

There were five more lunar landings, all by Americans. But before the last landing, on Dec. 7, 1972, space exploration had become controversial. A number of Americans had begun to question whether it was right to spend billions of dollars on space adventures when some people in the United States and many elsewhere were sick and hungry.

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