Men on Mars

[Slartibartfast]

Every time the Guv'ment has pushed for big science, it has flopped. The exceptions to this rule have been when there was some external push to keep momentum - as in the Cold War for the moon, or WWII for the Manhattan Project. Let's look...

The Superconducting Supercollider is just a big hole in the ground that cost millions and does nothing.

The space shuttle has from day one been too expensive. It has done much but at way too much expense, and danger.

Even the moon was a flop in the sense that yes, we made it, but then when real science was going to begin after all the engineering was perfected, they cut the program. That turned the whole thing into big stunt. Now to even get to the moon we have to reinvent the wheel.

Then we have the International Space Station.
All the science has been squeezed out of it by budget cuts. We are left with two astronauts in space performing so much maintainence they have no time for science. Now they want to kill the ISS after we have spent millions (probably billions) on it.

I laughed when Bush the first said we were going to Mars. It sounded like pure wishful thinking. Bush II is doing the same thing for me.

I want a functioning space program so badly, and yet even I see that Bush's plan for Mars is going to be a money pit. It is going to run overbudget at least by 300% and then give us squat.