I could not help but find it incredibly apt when a week or so ago a correspondent on "The Daily Show" explained the president's new proposition for manned missions to the moon and Mars in the following way: "This shows that the president has officially given up on Earth."
Of course, this may have been something of an exaggeration. Although it is clear that President Bush may indeed have every reason to wish he could leave this troubled little planet behind - the bedlam in postwar Iraq, the prospect of a wildly ballooning national debt making even Republicans rebellious and weakening presidential approval ratings - it's likely his motives for promulgating this new initiative are not so idealistic as he would have them seem.
First, there is the phenomenon that seems to hang around this administration through practically everything it does: I speak of that remarkable congruence between the administration's actions, and the wildest of whatever major corporate interests those actions concern. The vice president's energy task force, for instance, resulted in a bill that called for little actual conservation or renewable energy, but did give huge tax credits and other goodies to traditional oil, coal and mining concerns.
So if we look behind the veneer of idealistic discovery, we might expect to find corporate interests that would profit handsomely from something like these interplanetary exploits. And lo and behold: Lockheed Martin, Boeing and old favorite Halliburton all stand to gain contracts from increased spending on the moon/Mars mission, and have been lobbying hard for NASA to pursue it.
Technologies devised for space missions could make these companies very rich, even if the missions were canceled. For instance, drilling technologies developed for space might be used for oil exploration.
Second, we are told of great wonders to be found on the moon - like helium-3, a very rare form of helium that some suppose could be mined and used as fuel for nuclear fusion. There are a few problems with that, though:
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1) Cost. Even if the moon were solid gold, it would not be economical to mine it; and I doubt minute traces of helium-3 hidden in the lunar soil are quite as valuable as pure gold.
2) It's not necessary to go into space. Deuterium, a type of hydrogen that can also fuel fusion, is found in huge amounts in ordinary seawater.
3) This discussion isn't even relevant, because so far all attempts to get controlled energy from fusion have failed.
Third, there is doubt Bush really intends this plan as anything more than a politically motivated distraction. It is, after all, an election year, and one of the salient qualities of this White House seems to be its tendency to take politics over policy to a rather unprecedented extent.
After all, we are running a projected deficit for the year well over half a trillion dollars, and the projected 10-year debt has jumped by a trillion dollars just in the past five months. Considering Bush's cost estimates in excess of $400 billion for a Mars mission (never mind the moon base), it hardly seems wise for any president looking for re-election to forge ahead with such a plan under present circumstances.
Fourth, even as we are told about great discoveries to be made by sending human explorers - something of which many scientists are skeptical given the wealth of data obtainable with the latest space probes - we see the loss of proven programs in exploration. Among the most prominent of these is the Hubble Space Telescope.
This device, which has enhanced human understanding of the structure of the cosmos immeasurably since it was commissioned, is still only in the middle of its operational lifespan. Yet, to help finance the Mars missions, it has been decided the telescope shall be denied routine upkeep. Within a few years its systems will therefore fail completely, and it will fall out of orbit.
The astronomical community is rather despondent about the loss. "Its early termination ... is tragic. The loss is immeasurable," says Donald Hall of the University of Hawaii.
If it does after all turn out that Bush's initiative was merely a politically motivated distraction that is not followed through, it may actually be that our knowledge of the cosmos will end up retarded, just by the loss of the Hubble.
Also, some powerful voices feel threatened by China's space program, even though it has only sent tiny capsules briefly into orbit, hardly dominating space or (gasp!) claiming all the moon's helium-3 for itself. Such voices basically say the United States must show China who is boss in space.
Oh, please. The only American interests that might be truly threatened here are egos; if that's what is really motivating this effort, then God help us.
Space will still be there for billions of centuries to come, whereas the chance to make this world a truly great place to live will surely not last so long. As Al Gore said, why don't we try first "to ensure that the Earth is habitable for future generations?"
Then, we may step out into the cosmos with conscience clear.
