"If you really want NASA to succeed it needs long range plans like Bush's proposal. AND it needs the opposition party not to fight them. The timelines for going to Mars are so long that political machinations need to be kept out of the equation or Mars exploration just becomes something to kill off the next time the opposition party takes office"
Bush's proposal is simply an election year ploy, and an attempt to distract the public from all of the problems that have "coincidentally" happened during his Presidency. He will dump just enough money into it to appear that he is doing something for the greater good of mankind, but ultimately I think it is just a waste of everyone's time.
What Glenn is trying to explain is that if Nasa has to change gears at this point, all of our previous investments in the ISS (which are considerable) will be lost - with a mission to Mars (or the moon) so far in the future I don't think that we need to do anything that rash. Especially if Glenn is correct and the cost savings is only a few million dollars (I think he said 2.5).
As for the point about "wasting time on putting a boot print on Mars" - that is silly, the biggest reason we want to go to mars is not for a boot print, but to get some real samples and establish whether there was life/or could possibly have been life on that planet. With all of the new findings about liquid water being present in the past, this becomes even more exciting. Time on the moon is simply wasted time when it comes to answering one of the most compelling questions of our times - are we alone?
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A little off topic... I really truly thought I was the only one who played Mail Order Monsters - Anyone else know of it?
"If you really want NASA to succeed it needs long range plans like Bush's proposal. AND it needs the opposition party not to fight them. The timelines for going to Mars are so long that political machinations need to be kept out of the equation or Mars exploration just becomes something to kill off the next time the opposition party takes office" Bush's proposal is simply an election year ploy, and an attempt to distract the public from all of the problems that have "coincidentally" happened during his Presidency. He will dump just enough money into it to appear that he is doing something for the greater good of mankind, but ultimately I think it is just a waste of everyone's time. What Glenn is trying to explain is that if Nasa has to change gears at this point, all of our previous investments in the ISS (which are considerable) will be lost - with a mission to Mars (or the moon) so far in the future I don't think that we need to do anything that rash. Especially if Glenn is correct and the cost savings is only a few million dollars (I think he said 2.5). As for the point about "wasting time on putting a boot print on Mars" - that is silly, the biggest reason we want to go to mars is not for a boot print, but to get some real samples and establish whether there was life/or could possibly have been life on that planet. With all of the new findings about liquid water being present in the past, this becomes even more exciting. Time on the moon is simply wasted time when it comes to answering one of the most compelling questions of our times - are we alone?