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H.R. 3057: To the Asteroids, Moon and Mars
apsmith writes "Democrats have just introduced the Space Exploration Act of 2003 to the U.S. House of Representatives; the author is Nick Lampson of Texas, with 26 co-sponsors. The bill sets a vision and goals for the future of NASA, beyond the Low Earth Orbit of the Space Station and Shuttle, outlining a series of incremental steps for human spaceflight. These include development of reusable spacecraft for carrying people around in the Earth-Moon vicinity, including to the nearby Lagrange points; sending people to an Earth-crossing asteroid; establishing a lunar base, and sending people to Mars with a base on a Martian moon by 2024."
Rep. Lampson's congressional district includes Johnson Space Center, which would benefit greatly from an expansion of manned spaceflight.
But then again, I could be wrong.
According to this article there's lots of good stuff worth looking into:
(pasted from the link above)
The Lunar rocks may also be examined according to the chemicals that they contain. Such analysis indicates:
They are rich in refractory elements, which are elements such as calcium (Ca), Aluminum (Al), and Titanium (Ti) that form compounds having high melting points.
They are poor in the light elements such as hydrogen (H).
There is high abundance of elements like Silicon (Si) and Oxygen (O).
The high concentration of rare metals like Titanium, and the availability of abundant amounts of Silicon and Oxygen has led to serious proposals about mining and manufacturing operations in the future for the Moon.