President Bush recently unveiled a plan that would retire and replace the current space shuttle fleet, seek to create a permanent lunar base and have Americans walking on Mars. This plan was announced on the heels of the Mars probe landing, the news that the Chinese space program was planning on a manned lunar expedition and the revelation that the Russian space program has long since surpassed NASA in manned spacecraft technology.
Setting aside the suspicion that the president's plan resonates strongly with the space races of the Cold War, two troubling questions come to mind. First, does this initiative amount to nothing more than an election-year sound bite; second, how exactly does the president plan to finance this stellar vision?
Given that the president, for the last three years, has been more or less a one-trick pony when it came to administrative policy (say it all together: national security), this space program revitalization plan, along with the plan to give temporary work visas to current illegal immigrants, appears to be more or less campaign commercial fodder. To be certain, the aerospace industry would stand to benefit enormously, even if the space shuttle program was to be only an incidence of change and attention. Thanks to this plan, the president can rope in enough working-class voters, swing voters and major industries to put a dent in the Democrat's re-election dreams and then 86 the plans in November.
But if for some reason Bush was earnest about fundamentally improving American space exploration, one must question his fiscal priorities. Thanks to the war in Iraq and misguided economic policy, the United States is in a massive budget deficit.
To be sure, a permanent lunar base and an American as the first person to walk on Mars would be a monument to the power and potential of the United States. But while the country has a bloated budget and a deficit that will get bigger before it gets smaller, fiscal conservatism must be the guiding principle. Instead of sinking hundreds of billions of dollars into what appears to be little more than a PR campaign, public education and long-term Social Security solvency ought to yield more concrete and tangible benefits to America. In an election year, the Bush administration needs to get its head out of the clouds and on the issues that will make the difference.
