WP,pg1: Acceptance Slow for Bush's Space Plan (Ya think???)

[DeepModem Mom]

Acceptance Slow for Bush's Space Plan
With Some Scientists Skeptical, NASA Turns to Advertising Firm to Generate Appeal
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 2, 2008; A01

Four years after President Bush called for Americans to return to the moon and then voyage on to Mars, NASA is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design, build and test the spacecraft that would make it possible. But the effort has yet to capture the public's imagination as the Apollo project did in the 1960s, something tacitly acknowledged recently when NASA hired a New York advertising firm to help "brand" the program, now dubbed Constellation.

Moreover, some top space exploration advocates, policy experts and scientists, including some who initially supported the program, are questioning whether it can ever achieve its goals at a price taxpayers will accept. The doubters are sufficiently worried that they have organized a conference for Feb. 12-13 at Stanford University to debate the issue.

"With a new administration coming in soon, we have to seriously think about whether Constellation is doing what it should," said Louis Friedman, head of the Planetary Society. He was an active early supporter of much of the Bush plan but is now helping to organize the Stanford meeting. "Some of us have real doubts about whether the money will be available for the Bush plan, or whether the public supports Constellation enough to see it through," he said.

NASA, meanwhile, is mounting a vigorous defense of the steps it has taken to turn Bush's vision into a new generation of rockets and crew capsules, a lunar lander and ultimately a settlement on the moon....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020103258_pf.html

[Doc_Technical]

1. I know where we can get the money to pay for these programs

The United States has 11 carrier strike groups.

I think we only need 9 of these groups.

If we de-activate 2 of these strike groups, we will

have enough money for a space program and money to

repair our infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_battle_group