President George W. Bush’s much-anticipated speech on the revitalization of the United State’s space exploration program left many questions. The first query is whether the extra $1 billion that will be added to NASA’s already gargantuan $86 billion budget for the next five years, will really be enough to complete the international space station, get the space shuttle back safely in the air, design its replacement, prepare to return to the moon, set up a lunar base there and progress work for a manned Mars mission, probably launched from the moon. The president undoubtedly had good reason to say that Congress would be asked to approve further funding, if it were necessary. It surely will be.
When the president’s father announced the start of a Mars mission in 1989, the project quickly withered when it was then estimated it would cost $500 billion. Now, as then, presidential critics may be right in asserting that this ambitious new program has a lot to do with the Bush family’s White House re-election plans.
Yet it is hard to characterize these massively expensive space programs as a waste of money. The billions of dollars they cost do not shoot up into space with the rocketry. They stay on the ground in the pockets of scientific and technical firms, who will probably, as the president pointed out, have developed important new technologies that will be of great benefit here on earth.
Advance leaks suggested the president would speak of Americans following in the spirit of Columbus and other great explorers. In the event the president only referred to two US explorers Lewis and Clark. Wiser heads appear to have warned Bush that Columbus and his fellow adventurers were motivated as much by greed and conquest as they were by a thirst for knowledge. This might have been too close to the bone. Though the president said he wanted to work with other countries in space exploration, he sounded as if the US would only finish the international space station because it was contracted to do so. It must be suspected that in truth, whatever talk about further leap for Mankind, this is an American drive for conquest and control, both of new resources in space and of new technologies created to get there.
Perhaps however the biggest question unanswered by Bush’s lofty plans for space is how Americans can fix their eyes high up in the stars, when such a terrible mess lies at their feet. It is not simply the poverty and starvation and disease that still haunt large parts of the world; it is the injustice and oppression which mean millions live in misery and fear. Some of these sufferings are directly attributable to deeply ill-informed American policies. What is the point of reaching for the stars when you cannot hold out the hand of justice, friendship and understanding to the beleaguered people standing right in front of you?
