culann.com

To the moon, Alice

So, word on the street has it that Dubya is going to announce an effort to establish a settlement on the moon next week. From the Post’s story:

Another official involved in the discussions used similar language, saying that some of Bush’s aides want him to have a “Kennedy moment” — a reference to President John F. Kennedy’s call in 1961 for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.

Is it just me, or does everything Bush does lately have a ring of “Gotta get the people behind me” to it? Hello, election year!

I’m all for a whole-hearted, sincere renewal of space exploration - I think it has and will continue to provide immense benefits in both pure and applied science, and it’s darn cool to boot. I don’t think that Bush and his administration has this sort of enthusiasm for the project. It seems more likely to me that he is searching for his “Kennedy moment.”

I don’t know that this will be it, though - and I’m not even sure whether to be happy about it or not. At a place in history when we’re still battling poverty within our borders (12% of Americans), trying to find our role within the emerging global society (87 billion to rebuild a country we invaded on a false pretext), and suffering under a huge debt burden, I don’t know how receptive most of the US citizenry is going to be to the idea of spending the hundreds of billions it would take to get a moon base going. Sigh.