Mars vs. Marriage
Politics, Religion, Science 01/18/2004 |Money allocated by President Bush to increase NASA’s budget in order to encourage space exploration, a replacement for the Space Shuttle, finishing the International Space Station, establishing a manned base on the Moon, and planning for manned trips to Mars:
One billion dollars spread over the next five years.
Money allocated by President Bush in a planned drive to “promote traditional marriage values”:
One and a half billion dollars, apparently over a single year.
I guess we’ve all got to have our priorities, don’t we?
As a long-time science fiction geek, I’d really like to get excited about the new emphasis on space exploration and research, and even a little more budgetary increase is better than none. Somehow, though, it comes across to me as nothing more than election-year grandstanding than something that’s really going to have much impact.
iTunes: “Licking Plastic” by Winx from the album Left Above the Clouds (1996, 2:40).
[See also: Just another day of lies | Sci-Fi museum to open in two months | Bush sets new record | The 24.6 Second College Degree | Space Shuttle Colombia lost ]
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One Response to “Mars vs. Marriage”
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medhat abbas
Ryan Waddell
Sponge Bob
rawad
January 19th, 2004 at 8:11 am
I agree with you. I’d love to see more space exploration. It’s time for Bush to pull out some Aurthur C Clarke booiks or some Isaac Asimov books.
I read that the reorganization allows them to use something $3.8B in reallocated funds to pursue their new goals. So their actual increase is 3.8B + 1B. I might be wrong on the exact numbers… Overall I’m glad that someone came out and said what they did. It’s obviously important for NASA to have a directive given to them from outside. It gives them purpose and focus.
I just read on Slashdot that they believe this is a bigger plot to get greater military control of NASA for space based initiatives (no pun intended). The link is here if you’re interested: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/01/19/0256233.shtml?tid=126&tid=172.
I know that you might be interested in this (with your experiences with Microsoft…) check out this link: http://itvibe.com/default.aspx?NewsID=1199.
-Scott