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It will take us three days to get to the moon. It will take us two years or more to get to Mars, if we time it right.

Why go for all that length of time to Mars, and never land?

And what programs are the ones that will get scaled back and scrapped. I can think of any number of them that are of great value (like Hubble).

If he can pull this off maybe I can forgive him some of his past blunders. But he had better keep his house in order down here on Earth, or all these dreams will be for nothing.

Also, achievements in the space program don’t cover for character flaws. The plaque the Apollo 11 astronauts left on the moon had the signature of President Richard Nixon on it. It didn’t save him from any disgrace.

You say we had Viet Nam going the last time. Did we also have a 7 Trillion Dollar national debt that was heading to 10 or 12 Trillion by the end of the decade? I don’t think so.

Has this President no sense of fiscal responsibility whatever? Has he no sense of prioritizing? Forget the last question, Iraq answers that.

Hmm, methinks we might want to get Social Security and Medicare under control before we tackle Mars.

Thanks everyone for your comments. First an update due to my own ineptness:

The second quote comes from this link:

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040107-123930-1532r

I thought it was included and just realized it was not.

Stephen, my only guess as to why we would first attempt to orbit and take pictures would be to find the most suitable places to land with damaging our lander, and thus preventing us from leaving. That, however is something I also had a double take on. As for having a plaque with his name on Mars, I really doubt he or even the President in 2008 will have that. I think the way this policy sounds at this time we may see someone on Mars in 10 years or more. I don’t see the Hubble or other like programs scrapped, I think old antiquated projects, such as the space shuttles and maintaining them, may be scrapped in exchange for making safer and better means of transportation in space. The Hubble and the space station both will prove useful to prepare for such missions.

David, you are correct is saying that that large of debt was not in exsistence in the 60’s, but unfortunatly I am not sure exactly how this would be approached. The way I took the stories I read on this Bush will have NASA scapping some projects and redirecting funds in this direction. I don’t feel this is something Bush himself will be around as President to see come to fruition. As to the fiscal responsibilty I feel in this matter he does. If we are going to spend money in NASA we should spend it to move forward. I am tired of the same old science projects in space, and now feel we need to either move forward in exploring or stay out and let China or someone else go to the moon and Mars. If we wait around that is just what they will do, and I fear we will regret allowing them.

Sebastian, I would wait until the State of the Union address to see how all this will play out. I feel those will be addressed in good form there. If not, my apologies. I think however that, like I said before, if we are going to spend money in something as much as we do NASA we should make progress and move forward.

The Moon, um, didn’t we do that before? Maybe thirty years ago?

I hate to be uncivil, but setting up a permanent moon base is the silliest proposal I remember hearing from a president in my lifetime. Someone explain to me what the purpose of this base is. And don’t say inventing things. For what it costs to set up a moon base, we could fund an incredible number of basic science labs.

In short: Big waste of money.

We have modern satellites that can take high resolution pictures in whatever spectrum you could choose from. Others could scan the surface of mars with radar, to determine elevations and gradients, and then we could send a rover to analyze the soil for it’s ability to hold up under the lander. All of these things without risking a human life or wasting four years of time on a couple survey missions. Those were necessary in the time of the Apollo missions, when there was no technology sophisticated enough to achieve such missions in by unmanned flight.

We have an interest in establishing permanent residence off planet. That has been one of the great dreams of our times- to come out of the cradle and inhabit the other worlds of this solar system.

My fear is, we have a president who is not as scientifically literate as he should be, so he might not understand the consequences of certain policy decisions. They should take heed of the lessons of Columbia- hard physics can’t be spun. It can’t be bargained with. It doesn’t make compromises. It can be dealt with, but only in recognition of the facts and the data in front of those who can understand it.

President Bush should understand that these won’t be missions undertaken lightly. Even the moon will require a kind of ingenuity that hasn’t really been asked of this nation in quite some time. And he should understand: If he’s going to spend money on this, he should be willing to foot the whole bill. Hard Vacuum, hard radiation, and hard physics will not go out the window because Bush doesn’t have the resolve to spend what he needs to.

Nick, I really believe, neither China, the U.S., nor even the E.U. can afford to put people on Mars. This is what is so troubling about Bush’s upcoming announcement. If he were to announce a collaborative effort between China, the E.U., Russia, and the U.S. to put people on Mars, the cost sharing and brain sharing could make it feasible.

I suspect Bush is once again, going to announce the U.S. is going to go it alone with the notion of competitive advantage motivating it. This will be outdated and outmoded thinking that fails to stay current with reality. This kind of plan fails to reach out and spread out the cost and insure the very best minds, and as many as are needed to insure success. If he doesn’t reach out, it is a political ploy pure and simple and one that will push our national debt spiraling over the next 10 years.

Paul Craig Roberts of the Hoover Institution, and Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have, on C-span already acceeded to the idea that competitive advantage in a global economy which is propelled by nation states with parochial interest as their road map, is responsible in large part for the gross imbalances as we are now seeing and which are inevitable and insoluble in the short run. The jobless recovery is explained by them on this basis.

What this means is, because other nations can manufacture and produce technological output better and faster than we can, if we attempt to create the technology for Moon habitats, for transporting habitat and humans to colonies on Mars, other nations will incorporate our innovations and brain power into more cost effective development of the means for space habitats and human colonization and reap the economic rewards of our national investments.

Most of the ancillary economic rewards for discoveries too (like the next Kevlar or Velcro innovation) will be reaped by foreign countries faster and better due to lower cost of labor and materials and growing education levels in foreign nations.

The implication is that either globalization of economies must be halted which is impossible if we adhere to free enterprise and open markets, or, we must cease to think in nationalist competitive advantage terms. The example they cited is we invent technology and before it is implemented in the U.S., that technology is up and running in India, or China.

This would suggest that the U.S. move to Mars in cooperation with other foreign nations in which concessions and bartering for divying up the economic productive output of such adventures are contractually defined to insure a fair and adequate return on investment by the U.S. for its innovation and R&D which we are still the best at, so far. Combined with drastically lowering our investment and holding the growth of our national debt to a minimum as a result, it makes far more sense that some race to space like we had in the 60’s when conditions and circumstances were very different and far more favorable to the U.S. reaping economic rewards from such nationalist investments in innovation and R&D in space.

Rob, NASA has a budget of about 14 billion dollars. If it were to double, it would be about what we spend on Homeland security. Quadruple it, and it’s not even close to the expense of the latest budget supplement for the war in Iraq. It rates about 5% of the budget for defense in this country.

If we were spending the money on NASA that we were spending on Iraq in that one budget supplemental, we could definitely go places.

The problem isn’t that NASA might be getting more funding, the problem is that Bush is setting the tax rate at a insufficient level to prevent deficits.

Solve that, and you don’t have to worry about poor people starving. keep NASA where it is, and you’ve solved nothing.

In response to all that I have read I feel this is still a step forward. Does anyone here feel that we should keep the shuttle program, where the shuttles are perhaps older then many on this site (at least they are older then I am)? I feel many forget that this is a policy change. Will there be an increase in NASA’s budget? Who know’s really. I did find this in one story:

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040107-123930-1532r

To pay for the new effort — which would require a new generation of spacecraft but use Europe’s Ariane rockets and Russia’s Soyuz capsules in the interim — NASA’s space shuttle fleet would be retired as soon as construction of the International Space Station is completed, senior administration sources told United Press International.

I feel this is the right move, and even though I have felt troubled, and honestly questioned my own beliefs and ideas on whether this is a good move after the many wonderful and dissenting views from those assembled here I remain steadfast in my belief that we have two ways to go on this.

The first is to keep going the way we are with the current policy. I feel this would be a supreme waste of money. I would actually rather scrap the NASA budget then let them sit doing the same, only more advanced, that they have been doing for quite awhile.

Or we can go forward and set a policy that has us aiming at a goal higher then we have. We need this kind of goal. Why set a goal and have it the same as before. I know many are critical of Bush in many aspects. I am of his immigration policy and the Taiwan issue. In this though I feel it is long overdue. We should have had this policy many years ago.

The one comment I wish to really argue against however is this:

My fear is, we have a president who is not as scientifically literate as he should be…

It doesn’t matter if he is scientifically literate, only if he put people in place that are wise enough to know what to suggest and what to look at. Advisors, and cabinet members and the like. The buck stops at him, but there are more then just Bush in the executive offices.

I think if he wishes to lead on the issue of space exploration, he needs to understand why things cost what they do, why Missions must take place when they do, and what the cost of cutting corners might be. This can’t simply be him applying those “market forces” theories on how to improve things, because we know all too well where that led last time.

Part of my worry about Bush’s attitudes is that his choice of advisers was affected by it. Another part of my worry is how fast and how well he could deal with a crisis, and whether he would allow people to come to the conclusions the evidence would present them with.

Another part of it is that I fear that his Budgetary excesses may doom this possible renaissance to a death in the cradle, the way the recessions of the seventies killed the last great period of manned space exploration.

Also, I hope he doesn’t follow in his father’s footsteps as far as his approach to the budgeting. If he has the guts to suggest it, he should have the guts to follow through on it.

Well said, Nick. A plan to put people on Mars would require a minimum of over a year in space travel. In light of the rapidly growing national debt and retiring baby boom generation, I wonder if we would not be well advised to continue with the shuttle and get the space station completed, so we can complete the testing of the effects and corrective measures of putting folks in space for such a long period of time by using the space station.

When we turn the tide on the debt growth, then I believe it would be wise to scrap the shuttle altogether and start from scratch.

I have one other major concern. There has been a trend of late to provide guest privileges on flights into space for those who can afford to pay their way. The economics of colonizing Mars or the Moon raises some very tough questions about who should go, who should pay for them going, and who is going to manage affairs on the new colonies.

Are we talking military communities under martial law as could be argued as necessary for the safety and survival of all. Or are we talking self governing communities whose simple lifestyles would cost those back on earth very dearly to maintain. These are issues the tax payers should have input to and a say about. And the case needs to be made that the return on investment for those remaining on earth justifies the missions and colonies. I have not seen that case made yet.

Whatever the political and economic issues are, and despite my lack of many good words for Bush, I hope that we (humans, not just Americans) get back into serious space exploration again. Yes, there’s the ISS and the Mars Rover(s) out there but where is the Pan Am Clipper that we were promised in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001”? Where are the grand colonies in space that Werner von Braun (and others) predicted? What about the fantastic visions of Syd Mead? I don’t know if nations are necessarily going to be up to the task of taking the “next great step” into the unknowns of space. With the enormous economic potential of space tourism and projects like Scaled Composites “SpaceShipOne” (funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen) already starting to show promise, the days of big rockets representing an entire nation’s technical prowess and capabilities may be numbered. That’s not to say that NASA should be scrapped but that they (and the government-funded space programs of India and China) will probably start to be eclipsed by the achievements of privately/corporate-funded space programs looking to make a profit. Right now such things may seem pie-in-the sky but I’d bet there are plenty of people out there (Dennis Tito? Mark Shuttleworth? Paul Allen?) who wouldn’t shy away from funding a well-organized attempt to make “my” predictions a reality. From there, it’s not a big leap to forsee whole corporations based on space exploration, tourism, etc. — corporations who have committed to finding ways to make profits from space for their shareholders. So, while I commend Bush for his efforts and think that committing more money to space exploration is great, it is something that should be seen as a short-term investment that will be used to foster growth in the private sector. NASA is saddled with layer upon layer of bureaucracy that private companies will be forced to remain competitive, thus leading to efficiencies that government organizations can only dream of.

“minimum of over a year in space travel”

I remember reading somewhere this may be a minimum of much more. The first task would be to build a machine to get us there safely. I am unsure of the science behind it, but also I think there is a small window of opportunity where the Earth and Mars are closer together, or the distance is somewhat smaller. Anyone know of this, and its validity? I will look around and let you know if I find it.

Nick, I heard about this, in regards to the current Mars Rover. It was the course they took. Trick is, a machine can take much heavier acceleration forces for much longer than humans can. I heard about alternative engines being used for the trip though.

Ion drives, to be specific. With them, instead of short, strong bursts, like those of a chemical engine, you would have a steady stream of fast-moving charged particles, accelerating the craft for longer times to higher speeds. If they can hash that out, it’d be neat.

The trick of this is the need for a ballistic path. You can’t just head straight for where a planet is now and get there- you have to anticipate where it’s going to be relative to you as you get closer. Additionally, (and this is the toughest thing) you’ll have to fight your way up the gravity well of the sun as you head towards Mars. This will take a great deal of acceleration to achieve.

Huxley, I understand your point about Bureacracy in NASA, and think it somewhat true, but I’d warn you of one thing: corporations are just as capable of red tape as governments.

An undertaking that is large and complex enough will defy simple, direct administration. We might luck out on one or two points, but for the most part the corporations that take on these tasks will have to deal with the complexities of designing, producing and maintaining the systems. If the system exceeds about 150 people in size, some kind of complex hierarchy will have to take over. That’s a basic fact of human interaction. Whether this bureacracy is efficient or inefficient will be an open question. Whether it will exist is not.

As for the involvement of private industry, that’s not going to happen until the profitability of such ventures is demonstrated. Show somebody making money at it, or conditions that look favorable for the creation of a market, and then you’ll get private enterprise seriously involved.

To tell the truth, we are not getting to Mars until a working, compact fusion engine could be developed. Then there is the design of a ship that could get to Mars in a very short amount of time - say somewhere within 6 months and simultaniously create enough gravity so as not to cause adverse affects to the travellers (i.e. muscular atrophy, weak heart, hormone loss, and depression). Right now, no matter how much NASA wants it, there is no way someone could get to Mars even with another 20 years of research.

The moon could be done as well as a lunar base, but as stated above it would need to be a multi-national team due to the sheer cost of the venture. Yet, there are still a lot more problems to contend with.

Technicalities, technicalities…if Spock and Kirk could do it, why not G.W.?

Seriously though, Stephen I understand what you are saying and I realized after I posted my comments that I’d forgotten to clarify the fact that I know of corporate red-tape and it’s intrinsic problems but, when I said a private/corporate venture to explore and exploit space would move faster than a government-funded version of the same project, I was only pointing out that most corporations have more incentive (due to their fiscal responsibility to their shareholders/owners) than a government. Yes, the voting public has the power to vote on those in power but it is an indirect power that is not tied to any profits. If my 401(k) had a “Mars Mid-Cap Fund” or a “Moon Stable Asset Fund”, you know there would be public outcry if it failed to return any results.

What I’m forseeing (for government Mars/Moon missions) is bills rife with pork-barrel spending and impossible goals that, even if almost totally directed at getting Americans into a permanent habitat on the Moon (or at exploring Mars), will fall prey to a lack of vision due to minimal support from the voting public. Like Nick, Sebastian, and Stephen point out, there are a lot of people out there who don’t want to make the long-term commitment necessary to serious space exploration. The popularity of Mars and the Moon will quickly fall by the wayside as soon as people lose interest in the latest media buzz surrounding the landings of the Mars Rover(s) and, like the National Aerospace Plane, money once allocated for Bush’s plans will end up resulting in years of wasted effort.

Believe me, I am all for getting humans (whatever their nationality) into space and exploring the unknown (see my post Childhood’s End) but, until such endeavors can be made publicly-accessible, they are too remote from everyone’s real-world experience to remain part of our collective consciousness. Von Braun, Heinlein, Aasimov, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and a multitude of others brought the wonders of space travel home by putting a face onto the wonders outside our atmosphere. Whether (almost) outrageous hypothetical postulation or the single footstep of one individual, people connect with a face and name, not a project. Bush did not make a proclomation even approaching the gravity of J.F.K.’s — especially when considered in the context of the War on Terror versus the Cold War. If people are worried about possible terrorist attacks due to a hightened Alert Level, or they’re concerned that their prescription drug benefit will be cut, they aren’t likely to look favorably upon such “frivolous” side-projects as space exploration (especially if, like the shuttle missions, they start to become so “safe” and routine that they aren’t constantly exciting the Prozac-fueled, Adult-ADD-suffering masses).

If, on the other hand, you can offer people the possibility of experiencing space travel first hand (without having to be an Air Force fighter pilot, physicist, or go through grueling physicals and training) — until tourists can take the same photographs of Earth that the Apollo astronauts did, or they can be brought to a remote Moon rock mining colony (along with the requisite “Swan Lake” background soundtrack), space missions will remain so inaccessible as to be outside the realm of comprehension; especially considering the fact that CGI movies and other special effect techniques have become so realistic that people would rather live out their sci-fi fantasies vicariously through their flat-panel, plasma-screen, HDTVs (and computers) then have to spend a single dime of their tax money on something they can’t relate to. Sure, I am in support of going to the Moon and Mars, but I also found a lot of inspiration in watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” or “The Right Stuff”. Chuck Yeager represents the “rugged individual” that made America great — Burt Rutan, Dennis Tito, and Mark Shuttleworth (among others, not including Justin Timberlake) stand as evidence that normal (albeit well-funded/rich and daring) humans can break the bonds of our atmosphere. Videos of large teams at NASA mission control and scenes of numerous cheering scientists, while uplifting, ultimately have little effect upon people who are unconnected with the project that they can’t relate to, didn’t sacrifice anything for (other than their hard-earned wages), and can understand (except in abstract terms and concepts).

Of course, all of this discussion goes a long way to shifting the public focus away from other issues like the War in Iraq, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the Economy, the declining value of the dollar compared to the euro, overseas outsourcing, and other topics that the voting public should be more interested in and educated about…

Huxley75, that was very well thought out and stated. I agree with all but the last sentence in your first paragraph: “If my 401(k) had a “Mars Mid-Cap Fund” or a “Moon Stable Asset Fund”, you know there would be public outcry if it failed to return any results.”

The outcry would be to sell the stock, mission over, company bankrupt, (unless the gov’t. pulls a Chrysler type bail out). This is why private funding for space exploration for the foreseeable future is an invalid concept. The risk reward ratio is just too steep.

Well, people yanking their money out of any stock is a form of “outcry” but you’re certainly right, if the government bails the company out (I’m surprised you went all the way back to Chrysler for the example and didn’t look to the more recent and, in terms of this discussion, topical airline bailout) then the consumer really loses their power to change the way things are working.

I guess government handouts would be the biggest threat: if serious private investment in space were to occur (and I wasn’t thinking this would happen in the near future, I was forseeing this all occurring over a number of years/decades…although there is already a serious amount of information and resources available that came about from projects like the National Aerospace Plane, which we could use as a sturdy foundation for future projects) it wouldn’t happen over night and, once companies got themselves established, there would certainly be the “behemoth” effect whereby their lobbyists, contractors, government connections, and other various special-interest forces, would have the power to buffer them from the effects of a truly capitalist economy (financial difficulties? Well the Air Force needs a few more C-130s or in-fight refueling tankers…).

Certainly, there could be an Enron/Parmalat-type disaster that takes one player out of the market but that doesn’t me milk and energy isn’t available to consumers — there’s always another party ready to step in and fill the vacuum (no pun intended). Waving the American flag a bit, I’d hate to hear that Airbus or another foreign company/consortium (with copious amounts of government funding) is first to take the leap outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Think of how far Kelly Johnson took Lockheed’s Skunk Works with the U-2 and SR-71 (among other great planes) or where we could be with McDonnell-Douglas’s Delta Clipper (had it progressed farther to a real aircraft) — there is plenty of American ingenuity and hardwork just waiting to be brought together into real world aircraft that can take us (the layman) into space. If “we” don’t capitalize on the achievements of those projects then surely others (like China and India) will and then whether or not the U.S. government has to bail anyone out will be moot — there won’t be any American aerospace industry left.

I think, if Bush were willing to put the time and effort into backing this set of proposals, that he was willing to spend on a war in Iraq, he could maintain public attention. Of course it will fade out of view if Bush talks about it once, and does not mention it much after that.

The trick is, you can’t wait for people to jump on the bandwagon. You’ve got to drum up interest in science and technology, drum up interest in the planets. You’ve got to write speeches where you recall the worlds of the solar system and tell people amazing things about them.

The space shuttle has lasted as long as it did because it gave people the impression we were doing something. It was putting up satellites, going to and building the space station, and bringing back beautiful pictures for IMAX.

But it hasn’t taken us anywhere, or done much of anything for manned space exploration. It hasn’t gotten us any closer to the moon, or to mars, or the outer planets. It worked as work-a-day, spaceflight as a regular thing, but there was little obvious heroism to it, outside of the sacrifices of the Challenger and Columbia crews.

I think if we have a national destiny, this is it. I don’t think we should wait for China or the Europeans to return to the Moon. I think we, the first nation to get there, should be the first to return. If they want to follow, fine- let them. But we have to stop thinking that staying an Earthbound, science-ignorant society will ensure us any kind of future.

The Government will need to support space exploration until it becomes able to show a profit. That’ll take a little while, and will cost taxpayers, but the returns, as I demonstrated in another post, could be collosal, and could save us from both dirty fossil fuel and radioactive nuclear power. It could be what has the Chinese looking to do business with us,and what separates us from the slavery of a fossil fuels market. But it’s not going to happen on it’s own. And we may never get the kind of perfect opportunities that David hopes for. So we might as well take our risk now, and not hesitate until the opportunity is lost to sell this to the public.

I know I’ve beat this horse to a pulp but space exploration was one of those things that, as a child, inspired me (primarily it was space exploration and dinosaurs…). I’d like to see us (America) succeed in this endeavor, whatever that success eventually is but without Stephen’s “national destiny” I’m afraid it’s doomed to fail. Please show me that my prediction is wrong but, with the serious brain-drain inherent in the near-constant overseas outsourcing and the overall decline in the American educational system, where will tomorrow’s visionaries come from? I know there are plenty of kids out there who dream and fantasize about space travel but will they have the support, tools, and cultural nurturing necessary to turn those dreams into reality? Now that’s a vision that I hope isn’t an illusion…

I just don’t want to see mankind export his lack of will power in the form of pollution, territorial and resource grabbing warfare, and nationalistic one upmanship, into the solar system and beyond. My belief is that if we cannot reach for the stars as a peaceful species, we don’t belong out there in the first place. (Go ahead, tell me I watch too much Star Trek, I can take it.)

David, we will remain human. We will bring up many of our bad habits, as well as our good ones. As far as who gets up there, I think we should get NASA up there first, before we have big business, or worse, the Chinese there first.

If you think we’ll be bad about exploiting the moon, how do you think a nation with that bad of a human rights record will be?

Huxley, our children aren’t idiots, and our education system is not beyond repair. We should not set our expectations so low as to how many people we can employ in our efforts

I do think we need a shift in our culture. We’re too absorbed in having people go for jobs because of the money in them. From software engineering, to medicine, to the law, we’ve glutted one kind of occupation after another not because the people going for the careers are well-suited to them, but because that’s what they are told pays.

If there is any reason why the American dream has died for so many and we have fallen into decadence, it’s that we’ve developed a culture of envy. Either we envy the authority of those who earn their power through education and discourage that in our children, or we envy those with material wealth, and imitate their career choices and behavior.

We need to go beyond the three R’s. We need to start serious exposing our kids to principles of science and technology early, starting with the familiar items of their lives, and building from there. We can no longer afford to teach our children as if they are destined for factory jobs, because at the very least they will have to be technicians to find work.

It can be done. Somebody just has to sit down and think it over.

I’m not saying that children are idiots — unless we let them get that way. I would hazard a guess though that most of them are better at identifying a certain car brand then who the Speaker of the House is or any of the Democratic candidates (let alone anyone’s policies). They (and we) can make this change but we’d all need better vision and focus…and it seems that we aren’t the only ones discussing this matter: The Economist is running this article which also believes private investment in space exploration is the key to the future. Guess I’ve got at least one other person’s support for my vision.

Kids can identify brands of cars because they are exposed to commercials hawking those cars every day of the year, every hour of the day they watch. You repeat something to a person enough, and it becomes common knowledge, or conventional wisdom.

Repeat after me: raising taxes hurts the economy.
Saddam Hussein was involved with terrorists, and the terrorist were involved in 9/11.
There are chemical weapons in Iraq.
The UN represents Old Europe, The Coalition of the Willing represents the New Europe.

But think about this for a moment: There already is a network on air that provides broader understanding of science- it’s called PBS. Advocate that they show their kids stuff on that channel. I know I benefited from it. Get them watching the History Channel and the Discovery Channel when they aren’t showing those damn chop-shop and home-improvement shows.

As for NASA, I think they should take the first leg of the journey, if nothing else. NASA is the only organization ever to send a human being to the moon. That experience has to count for something.

Saddam Hussein was involved with terrorists, and the terrorists were involved in 9/11.

That didn’t come out right. I apologize. I meant to imply this is how the Myth that Saddam was involved with 9/11 got started: a simple syllogism, digested down to the conventional wisdom.

Stephen commented: “David, we will remain human. We will bring up many of our bad habits, as well as our good ones.”

Where would we be if the Neanderthal’s thought that way, or homo erectus? Arguments that the human species cannot become a peaceful species at large, just doesn’t wash with me.

In just a few thousand years we went from tribalism to dictatorial and feudal nationalism and in just a few hundred years we went from nationalism to the U.N., Nato, EU, and democracy is spreading even into China and Cuba. These are all giant leaps toward evolving into a peaceful species.

To accept human nature as conflicted and predisposed to war, is to avert one’s eyes to the potential of the species as seen from an evolutionary perspective, I think.

As soon as I read that other programs not contributing to the president’s “man-on-the-moon” goals will be trashed, I thought ‘there goes all the good SCIENCE being done by NASA.’ This president and his supporters aren’t interested in science. The Hubble telescope is showing us that the universe is older than conservative Christians want to accept. Will the Hubble be taken off-line?

The Mars rover will be looking for WATER, and the possibilities of LIFE on our sister planet. Will Bush terminate the search for extra-terrestial life? Will he find other excuses to stop scientific inquiry… unless it supports his political goals? He and Karl Rove have shown us over and over that this administration is all about politics all the time. This whole effort is simply a ploy by Bush and Rove to make political hay after realizing that Americans are fascinated with NASA’s success in landing a robot on the surface of another planet. Like Dennis Kucinich said last night in Iowa: Maybe they want to look for weapons of mass destruction on Mars!

Where would we be if the Neanderthal’s thought that way, or homo erectus? Arguments that the human species cannot become a peaceful species at large, just doesn’t wash with me.

Evolution is not a process of perfection, and never has been. Neanderthal and Homo Erectus were well adapted to their surroundings, their evironments. They weren’t merely stepping stones to us.

Just as well, ancient societies survived for long periods of time despite their lack of “ideal” construction. Egypt was monarchical Theocracy- it lasted for thousands of years. Rome had it’s twelve hundred years, and from there Byzantium lasted for another thousand years. They worked well enough, despite their injustices, to exist across stretches of time America has not even begun to traverse.

I guess the reason I no longer equate evolution with perfection comes from the fact that I know more about what evolution really means. It means that species change randomly, in small ways, over time. Those random changes are filtered by natural selection, most never persisting. Creature’s situations change, and so over the generations do the creatures change as their genetics, and the phenotypes that result interact with the habitat and creatures around them. That’s the important part.

People adapt their behavior to suit their environments, and to some extent to suit their values. Cultures are what we could call the results of such adaptation.

Look at our cultures: Look at Microsoft, Serbia, Enron, and the pre-Columbia crash maintenance administration at NASA. All these are examples of cultures that shaped the behavior of the individuals within with disastrous consequences.

Of course, there is America. There is the enlightenment- there are many cultures that fostered goodness and righteousness in their people. But these are not guaranteed, inevitable cultures. None are. Most want to be. Ask the Nazis, the Romans, the Kings of France, and of England. But even those cultures decline and are destroyed.

What does this tell us? It tell us that we cannot always count upon our society to shape us towards the best ends, or even wait for it to do so. We have to take the initiative. We have to work to create a better world. It won’t simply happen.

We will not be a perfect or peaceful species when we reach the moon or the planets. And I’m certain we can’t wait to become one.

The question is how we engage the challenges ahead, and whether we allow the good dreams of space and future civilization to interfere with the creation of a good reality.

Star Trek is idealistic. That’s it’s charm. But its’ not really hard science. It’s society is more homogenized than it is real. The society that goes into space will be human, and if we want to make realities better, we’re just going to have to bite down, learn about the subject, and put forward the effort.

Stephen, I can’t think of a more hostile environment requiring the utmost in cooperation and peaceful conflict resolution than space.

Just for grins, I wonder how many colonies will have to destroy themselves before we hit upon the right psychological and genetic makeup to permit breeding humans adapted to peaceful entry to space and allow a colony to survive. I think I will find a way to avoid paying taxes through the experiment.

Seriously though, I cannot forget nor escape the obvious from my experience in growing up in the U.S. The fact that our nation was founded by intolerant religious zealots, built up on the exploitation, war, and near decimation of indigenous peoples. Made constitutionally independent as a nation by a document whose entire premise is that power corrupts and government of, by, and for the people, should never be trusted without due vigilence paid. A nation which chose to continue the killing of 58 thousand of its own long after the hope of winning was lost and whose premises for that war were completely wrong (Communist exapansion - wrong / Civil War - correct). And now Iraq and all that it entails.

We were a shining example of hope for what is possible for mankind and nations around the world in terms of peacemakers and the concept of what greatness can come from be aspiring to be a world leader for the good of the world. That example was held high in our public speech if not as much in our public actions. As long as that example was shining, the hope for a peaceful, cooperative, and multi-national effort into space was real. I just hope 9/11 and our response to that horrible event has not tarnished that hope permanently for ourselves, and the rest of mankind.

Enjoyed this discussion immensely. It has taken me down avenues of thinking and speculation I otherwise might not have travelled.

This is the oldest political trick in the book.

Come up with some grandiose “visionary” plan like putting a man on Mars to divert the electorates attention from the serious issues when you have no vision and are doing badly or what is against the public interest.

Job keep on leaving America under free trade, the middle class and poor are getting poorer and only the rich have seen their incomes go up and taxes go down.

Given what I read on this site, Toronto, I highly doubt it’s distracting anyone. I mean, look at me. I’m defending the Budget increase on NASA up and down the street. But I’m not defending any of his other policies. I looked at a recent poll and it indicated that while people where thrilled with the idea of a space mission, they didn’t want to pay billions more for it. Unrealistic, but indicative of their concern for the budget.

Here it is: (click on “A trip to the moon?”).

It’s a good idea, and it will get the ball rolling, but it won’t save Bush’s adminstration anymore than it saved the Nixon adminstration (his name is signed on the plaque Apollo 11 left on the Moon).

Im with my friend yesterday. Use 15 millions pictures search free and we get all what we wanna.