President Bush announced that we the people are going back to the moon and then onward to Mars, the red planet, with manned flights. Bush wants to accomplish this within the next twenty years. He has pledged an additional $87 million dollars over the next 5 years for NASA to study and update the aging shuttle system and create new innovative ways to propel fragile men into the cold vastness of space to explore a planet that has been dead for a billion years. It doesn’t matter that we already invaded Mars with our robotic rovers that have captured breathtaking photo’s.
It doesn’t matter that we have a new and improved lander on Mars right now promising more advanced experiments to measure soil content, search for and find water, and for signs of life, past and present. It seems that robotic space exploration is far cheaper and safer than manned exploration. At this time, there is no need to risk the lives of our astronauts. Not to mention the tremendous expense for manned flight.
How does President Bush plan on paying for this space adventure? It has been estimated that the cost of the journey to Mars will be 1 trillion dollars. Yes, trillion. What does that mean to the average American taxpayer? It means that each and every one of us taxpayers will be shelling out over $6000.00 to the Mars project.
The Grassy Knoll Institute is all for the exploration of space, but the trillion dollars could be better used for a host of other critical needs in the United States.
I would much rather see adding more schools and teachers to educate our children.
I would rather see medical research to curb or cure deadly diseases.
I would rather see bolstering our homeless shelters making sure everyone has something to eat every night.
Hiring more police officers, rescue workers, and firefighters.
If I am going to kick in 6 plus grand of my hard earned tax money, I want more than pictures from a distant planet that I will never visit.
Also, I wondered why Bush has decided to make such a bold statement.
The answer is very simple. He wants to liken himself to President Kennedy and his bold initiative of landing a man on the moon and bringing him back safely by the end of the 1960′s decade. Kennedy introduced this during his inaugural address. These were pretty strong words for a newly elected president. Yet, the public was enamored with Kennedy and quickly got behind his dream pledging their support as well.
We were all in this together was the feel and atmosphere at that time. The Astronauts were elevated to elite status and NASA pushed forward and Armstrong finally took that historic first step on the moon in 1969.
Kennedy, even though assassinated, kept his pledge to the American people of landing a man on the moon, and NASA kept it’s end of the bargain by using all it’s resources to make the Apollo program successful. President Kennedy will be forever linked to Americans landing on the moon and the huge technology advance needed to make it happen.
President Bush understands this. He realizes that the American people are enamored with space and the planet Mars. What better way to go down in history than to be remembered as the president that dared the American public to expand into space to the planet Mars. I know he doesn’t want to be remembered as being the president that almost choked to death on a pretzel.
Yes folks, President Bush has a strategery!
LURKING ON THE GRASSY KNOLL
