The "lunacy" of Bush's Mars and Moon ideas exposed...

[pmbryant]

by Gregg Easterbrook of TNR of all people. Read it anyway. It's excellent and pretty much right on the mark.

http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1166

OVER THE MOON PART III: Are there senior citizens who need prescription drugs on the Moon? Does the religious right favor a Moon base? How about illegal immigrants, would they be willing to take Moon jobs that Americans don't want?

I'm sitting here trying to figure out what possible reason--other than science illiteracy at the White House--there could be for George W. Bush to announce a plan to build a Moon base. Manned exploration of Mars is even crazier.

(snip)

What would astronauts at a Moon base do? I haven't the foggiest notion. Note that NASA has not so much as sent a robot probe to the Moon in 30 years, because as far as space-exploration advocates can tell, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, of value to do on the Moon. Geologists are interested in the Moon's formation. If there is ever a fusion reactor to meet the world's energy needs, the "helium three" on the Moon might prove useful, but fusion reactors are decades away from practicality, assuming they ever work. Spending $200 billion on a Moon base that does nothing would be pure, undiluted government waste.

(snip)

<On the Mars mission proposal...>

Now we're up to an 1,125-ton spacecraft and a $28 billion launch cost. (Probably a Mars mission would operate in segments, with several robot supply ships departing long before the manned craft; but for the cost calculation, the driving factor is total weight.) Twenty-eight billion is twice NASA's budget and, again, that is just the cost to launch the thing, not to build the ship, staff it and support it. When Bush's father asked NASA in 1989 about a Mars mission, the agency shot back a total program cost of $400 billion. That's $600 billion in today's money, and sounds about right as a Mars mission estimate. This is assuming no pointless stopover at the Moon; add a Moon base and the price zooms toward $1 trillion! We're getting into the range here of the national debt.

(snip)

What NASA needs right now is not an absurd, bank-breaking grand mission: It needs to spend a decade researching a safer lower-cost alternative to the space shuttle.

And why might George W. Bush endorse a Moon base or Mars mission? Either he's a science illiterate surrounded by advisors who are science illiterates, or it's a blank check for aerospace contractors.