Opinion

Bush’s space program plans

A few stars short of a galaxy

By Marshall Dury

Posted on Jan. 19, 2004, at 12:00 a.m.

Undoubtedly you have heard about President Bush’s plan to send Americans back to the moon. Like most of us, I was indifferent about the project until I got some of the details surrounding Bush’s comic book fantasy as I like to call it.

The space program has taken a serious financial and public support hit since the Columbia shuttle disaster. I don’t think, however, that the way to reinvigorate the space program’s weakened infrastructure is to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at it until the NASA gods are satisfied.

What better way to get the richest people in the country to support one of your new campaign promises than to show them how you’re going to be paying for this kind of waste: with middle-class American’s taxes. This child-like dream of setting up a permanent establishment on the moon is just another example of how President Bush is not making the U.S. deficit a priority in his 2004 campaign. If he wants to go to the moon, why doesn’t he try taxing the wealthiest 10 percent of people in the country? My bad, he’s working off the premise that blood is thicker than oil. Surely the appropriately named Vice President Dick Cheney would agree with that sentiment.

What I do not want to hear is that I am anti-science or anti-space progress. The thought of going to the moon again is a great idea, but I’m not totally sure why we would need to go – it being a giant, weightless dust bowl. I must admit, though, science occasionally beckons and, in the end, answering that call sometimes yields the deepest of insights into human technology. In the end, however, the moon can wait.

The American deficit is half-a-trillion dollars and that cannot wait. I’m not saying that the deficit is all Bush’s fault. Sept. 11 certainly put a serious crack in America’s financial and mental spending foundation. The way to combat this damaged metaphorical psyche, however, is not to slingshot man after man – filled with backpacks that cost as much as a house – to the moon.

Another humorous idea that Bush is indulging is the thought of “harvesting” the moon for its energy resources. That’s the kind of spirit that built American. If you can’t get what you want where you are, take it from somewhere else. We’ve torn apart and degraded the natural resources in America and in countries abroad for long enough. Right when we should be looking for alternative and healthier forms of energy consumption, Bush restores the deeply misled cornucopian tenet that science will be able to fix everything. What does not fix the problem of a lack of renewable energy resources is a president with a deeper sense of commitment to his wallet than to the people who depend on his distorted view of leadership.

Maybe I’m not focusing on the real issue here. Maybe Bush is playing cleanup for his father yet again – think Saddam Hussein. Enclosed in President Bush’s plan to return to the moon, there will be a financial and scientific strategy to get Americans to step foot on Mars. Oddly enough, the president’s father set up a similar program in 1989, but it fell to the wayside. Why you ask? Cost.

Is Bush wearing an ear piece? Is he “reading his fathers lips?” I am not na�ve enough to think that Bush is void of the occasional pep talk from his cabinet. But I have a feeling someone behind the scenes is pulling the strings, and Bush is playing the role of a puppet in a very elaborate ventriloquist act.

Why doesn’t Bush focuses his energy on America? I was excited when I saw the somewhat-live pictures NASA’s rover sent back from Mars to earth. I was not feeling ambitious enough, however, to sink billions and billions of dollars to set up a space station on the moon so we can play space cowboy – testing our overpriced lasers and breathing devices that we one day want to use on Mars.

Someone could surely say, “If not now, when?” or “No time like the present.” This is true. If we put the idea of traveling abroad in space long enough, no one will remember or care about stepping foot on the red planet. The voice of America – the people who are supposedly behind Bush – were not wondering why we aren’t on Mars or back on the moon. This is his own brilliant idea. To go back to the moon, set up a space station there, and travel to Mars would be a step back for the hurting planet that needs more help than President Bush can give.

Marshall Dury is a senior English major.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2004, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.