Another perspective on the manned mission to Mars:

For the $1 trillion that bush intends to waste on this ludicrous farce, NASA could put 1.250 rover-quality robots to Mars.

Meanwhile we lose the Hubble, and god knows how many other programs doing real science and providing real benefits.

...and spend the rest on paying down the damn deficit.

I also would imagine building 100 rovers is a lot cheaper per rover than building them one and two at a time...

that money could be better spent in helping the unemployed SURVIVE.
The homeless have a roof over their heads. Our children educated
and thus competitve in the future.

I am sick and tired of scams!

  Here is a list of things that America needs much more
than a reenactment of our bygone exploits in space.
      -- An up-to-date and comprehensive passenger rail
system.
      -- Reconstruction of interurban light rail lines
connecting smaller towns to larger cities.
      -- A single-payer national health care system.
      -- Many thousands of new, smaller schools to replace
the gigantic suburban factory schools and decrepitating
inner city factory schools.
      -- Two divisions of the Army deployed to secure our
border with Mexico.
      -- A comprehensive agricultural reform program
including support for local, small-scale farming, local
value-added production of farm products, community
gardens, and agricultural education.
      -- A federal department of de-suburbanization to
help states and counties cope with the enormous problems
we will soon face with our misallocated resources

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary9.html

There won't be any money spent on any trip to Mars because, like all the previous "ideas" spouted from the Royal Pie Hole, the Mars/Moon proposal wasn't serious. The press just pretends it is so they can continue to prop up The Fraud.

Duhbya's Mars Mission is BS. There's only only one purpose for further space exploration under a Bush plan: WEAPONS IN SPACE. And, for that, the moon is as far as he need go. If he thought he'd get to push the nuke button himself, he'd fly to the moon for the photo-op.

What about simple and cheap and extraordinarily important- as they are easy- space projects? You can laugh if you want at SETI, the citizen computer sharing project analyzing data on the territory Bush proposes to conquer, but the GOP cut its funding. Good riddance government. Now it is the hands of citizens of the world although they have to line up at Arecibo and elsewhere to get a shot at the raw data. An estimate of finding some WH size leaks from other species runs from 25 to 100 years. Apparently the GOP doesn't think the planet will last that long under their tender ministrations. It actually angers and frightens them at the prospect of real beings better than they are with other religions and scary power stuff. They scoff. They look at space and see real estate, but mainly pretty light decorations glorifying their state of blessed superiority.

Mission two: save our skins. There is no more fun way to end the world than to receive the inevitable visitation of outsized pebbles such as slammed into Jupiter. Lucky big planet, it would have demolished ours. Scientists are cobbling together better data on scanning for these nuisances, but this is also not an exciting priority for the GOP. Might interfere with Armageddon, as prophesied by Bruce Willis. Or getting the science on supernovas down as we scan all the neighboring stars who could roast us with protons should they be so inclined.

The old stuff. People are bored with shuttles and space walks, pictures of stones and interstellar gas spills patterns. Even letting the last of the rickety shuttles blow up for the benefit of a
national ritual of mourning has no bloom left on it. Haven't done Mars yet. Do the Kennedy thing. Don't talk about the narrow, inward looking defense agenda boosted above the nations that can't reach that high.

Talk about Mars. The only thing left now is how to make the wait for the long time deferential exciting, and how many commercials can be squeezed into the Q & A.

"Hello, Mars mission..."
Radio waves crawl for a while.

"This is Mars Mission, I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
Pause for station break and a Lord of the Rings Marathon, followed by a Love Boat marathon followed by...

"Hello..."


By then they might be humiliated as SETI uncovers alien life a billion times more intelligent than all the Bush Family put together
followed by badly timed celestial meteor shower canceling the Human project for lack of moral funds.